A Girl Named Grace and a Harpy Named Guilt

It all started with a girl named Grace.

Do you remember the age when it was still taboo to play with the other gender? For most, it was in elementary school, from Grades 1 til 3 specifically. I've always been a bit slow with picking up these little societal rules though. I was the last in my class to learn to tie my shoes, last to learn that fruits and vegetables are icky (I'm still having trouble getting over this), and definitely the last to stop chasing girls. I waited until I was in 4th Grade to stop being friends with girls, and didn't pick it up again until I was a freshman in High School. Sure I was attracted to girls all through Junior High, but it never clicked that I could also be their friends. I just admired them from afar.

But back when I was playing with girls, I was bold. They used to call me Tito Burrito and I'd chase them around. That was our game, until I went to private school and I was told that chasing girls was bad. That was fine with me; I became friends with them in other ways. One of my best friends in 2nd Grade was this blonde girl named Grace; I think her hair was bright like sunshine. Besides her hair, all I remember about her is striped socks and that she was obsessed with animals. At this age, I was loving Beanie Babies and video games. Since I already had enough dude friends who loved video games, I was able to share my Beanie Baby passion with my friend Grace. She was great. 

The playground of our school was in the back, far away from where parents dropped off their kids, and there was this long walkway that you had to walk down to get to it. My parents always dropped me off at school very early, so I would wait at the end of this walkway for Grace to show up, and my heart would always pitter patter whenever I saw her coming. I loved her with all that a little 2nd Grader could muster.

But then the unforgivable happened. One day, I was wrong. I was sitting at the end of the walkway and I saw my sunshine-haired friend coming toward me. "Grace!" I shouted and lept to my feet! One thing you have to know now is that I've always had bad vision, but I didn't realize I needed glasses until 7th Grade. This was one of those moments that glasses would have saved me from trouble. As this blonde girl approached, I realized it wasn't my lovely friend Grace but a bewildered blonde 3rd Grader. I realized my blunder, and this superior 3rd Grader realized that I made a stupid mistake too. How dare this queer 2nd Grader talk to her and call her by the wrong name. She gave me such a glare that was so harsh that it seemed to cast a shadow on her countenance and I was so startled that I could do nothing but run away in shame and embarrassment. I felt mortified. I don't remember if I ever played with Grace after that. I think she moved away after that year too.

This was the first time in my life that I remember feeling guilt. Part of me hesitates to call it guilt because I made this mistake by accident and it's not like I enjoyed making the mistake. Maybe it could be called shame instead. Their have been plenty of times I did bad things before this (my parents have a video of me stealing toys from my brothers), their have also been plenty of times that I knowingly did bad things because I enjoyed the sick pleasure of doing something wrong, and their have been plenty times where I have simply been selfish and regretted it afterwards. But the fact remains that I made a mistake; I was at the very least guilty of a lack of foresight. As the old saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Maybe if I loved my brothers more, I wouldn't have have stolen from them. Maybe if I wasn't so desensitized to violencem I wouldn't play Gear of War to cool off. Maybe if I wasn't so obsessed with video games, I never would have ditched my friends slumber party simply because his Nintendo 64 wasn't working. Maybe if I was a bit more patient and level headed I would never have confused my beautiful blonde Grace with a crabby blonde bitch of a 3rd Grader.

 

Jesus said that it would be better for a person to rip out their own eye or cut off their own hand than to let sin  lead us to Hell. I was talking to a friend about guilt when I realized that, in the moments that I feel shame and guilt, I would gladly follow Jesus' advice. Even if I would never actually do this out of a firm understanding that self-mutilation is a bad thing, it's how I feel. Guilt makes me feel like my very skin is a lie that is covering the truth that I am a vile and horrible person that people could never want to be around. I'd gladly give up a hand if it could keep me from feeling that way ever again. But I've been around enough people who struggle with depression, cutting, and suicide to know that even my extreme feelings of guilt pale in comparison to what other people feel about themselves. I've begun to think that most of these extreme and dangerous thought disorders can be explained by guilt and shame. What is OCD but guilt over being unclean? Is Anorexia just guilt over being glutinous? Is Obsession just guilt over being slothful? Is depression just guilt over having been wrong so many times?

Yet the weird flip-side of this is that I do not always think that guilt is a bad thing. If you've ever seen the Dark Knight, you wish that the Joker would feel just a bit guilty over the horrors that he commits. What if dictators felt guilty about murdering children? What if rapists felt guilty about their treatment of women? If you've ever had someone betray you, you wish that your friend would feel guilty over being the Brutus to your Caesar. It is a good thing for people who have wronged someone to feel bad about it. In some ways, the only way to keep yourself from becoming a tyrannical psychopath is to actually feel guilt.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I didn't know what to do with guilt, so I talked with my Dad about it. "How do you deal with guilt Dad?" I asked. "Well, I just stop doing what made me feel guilty. You probably don't remember this, but when you were a kid, about two years old, I was playing catch with you when I accidentally threw something too hard and it knocked the wind out of you. I felt so bad about having hurt you that I refused to ever throw anything to you again. Since then, I haven't played catch with you." I didn't remember that story. I also do not remember the last time my dad threw something at me or to me.

Is guilt this simple to deal with? Is the answer to guilt that we just stop doing what made us feel guilty? As I thought about it more, I wondered what it would be like not to feel guilty and what guilt would to that. Guilt is insistent. If we don't feel guilt, we can continue to do bad and hurtful things without so much as a second thought. Guilt might not stop us, but it gets us to question what we are doing. If it continues and if their is such a thing as good and bad in the universe, a good pursuit of a good question will put us back onto the path of the righteous.

In J.R.R Tolkein's Lord of the Ring: The Return of the King, Aragorn talks about Merry's healing from the wound he received after stabbing the Ring Wraith Captain. He says "Do not be afraid, I came in time, and I have called [Merry] back. He is weary now, and grieved, and he has taken a hurt like lady Eowyn, daring to smite that deadly thing. But these evils can be amended, so strong and gay a spirit is in him. His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom."

I used to look at guilt as something that defined my worth. I was worth less if I was guilty than what I would be worth if I was pure. I did not deserve love because I was guilty. Now I have begun to see that my worth and how much I am loved is not defined by my guilt, but are separate things. Guilt can consume you if you let it define your love, and this is why depression can become so powerful. It tells us we have no worth, that we are not worthy of love or have the strength to change. But guilt has a place; not to darken a heart but to teach wisdom. We can be loved even if we are guilty. We are loved even though we are guilty.

So now I'm trying something new. I'm letting myself feel guilty then reminding myself that I'm loved. Then I struggle with my guilt and let it teach me something. I attempt to follow through with that lesson. I let myself be loved without questioning if I'm lovable or not. It's like Chesterton says in Orthodoxy: the lesson from Beauty and the Beast is that something must first be loved to become lovable, not the other way around. I let myself feel guilty, but, more importantly, I let myself feel loved. I let myself know I did something wrong, then I remind myself that it does not change how loved I am. That my guilt and my value are two separate things. Then I try to change.

I should have just gotten glasses, then continued to play with Grace.

10 Finger Prayer

"Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner."

It occurred to me that this prayer has 10 words in it, and you can count that out on your fingers. When I was young, I was taught a 10 finger prayer: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." The idea is that, whenever you look at your hands, you remember the prayer and say it. You say it to keep motivated through out the day. You're reminding yourself that you're not alone and Christ is there to help you. No challenge is too big.

I just read two short stories by J.D. Salinger called "Franny" and "Zooey." In "Franny", the protagonist Franny (shocker, she has the same name as the title!) is afflicted because she read a book called The Way of the Pilgrim.

In THIS book (yes, it's a book within a book, bare with me), the main character has lost his wife and his family. The pilgrim gets it into his head that he wants to know what it means to "pray without ceasing" in Thessalonians. He goes around Russia, asking various priests and theologians what it means. Eventually, he comes across a monk (at least I think it was a monk) who tells him about the Jesus Prayer. The idea behind it is that you pray "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner" every moment of every day until it becomes as prevalent, unnoticed, and necessary as your heartbeat. He then goes around Russia telling everyone what he learned.

In the first short story, Franny is having a rough time. She keeps praying it and feels guilty often. She's not able to control herself at times and says things that she regrets. When I was reading it, I thought that what she had to say was been mean in the context, but she was never wrong. Franny also never really said anything that was morally wrong to say. She just shared her opinions, and she was right about them (in my opinion). But she said them at the wrong time, and I do think she was right to feel bad about when she said them.

I tried the Jesus Prayer for a bit after this, but I didn't have enough discipline to do it well. I'm no expert on it. I didn't try it for long enough to say if it leads to enlightenment and becomes like your heartbeat, but I did notice that I would be very conscious about how much I needed mercy while I was doing it. I had more focus throughout my day. I had a lot more patience with the people around me because I believe that it is a mercy that they are in my life to begin with. I felt bad when I spoke out of turn, and glad when I was included in things. It took my focus off myself, and I felt bad for people who focused on themselves.

It seemed to me that we are all trapped in our own heads and, as a result, are distancing ourselves from each other. It seemed like we needed mercy for having opinions, because our opinions are what cause dissent.

In "Zooey", Franny talks about how ego is disgusting her, and she hates the fact that she has her own and how it gets her in trouble. Everyone is so impressed with their own ideas and opinion that everyone is just disgustingly self-centered. People have a keen eye on themselves and on nothing outside themselves. Poets more often focus on shocking people instead of talking about something beautiful. Shouldn't people be trying to figure out what is beautiful instead of impressing people?

Probably, but maybe we aren't supposed to get hung up on this question.

This thought made me struggle with a very difficult question: How can we have opinions and be happy while we see what is wrong with the world?

Now, because I haven't read The Way of the Pilgrim or practiced the Jesus Prayer enough, I do not know how valid this thought is, but it's been good for me to think about. Zooey (Franny's older brother), tells her what he thought of the prayer. All he does is talk about how great Jesus is, and how you should not be praying the Jesus Prayer if you do not like Him.

But strangely enough, that's been the answer to the problem of the Ego.

Zooey shows Franny that her focus was on the wrong part of the prayer. My focus was on the wrong part of the prayer. Whenever I said it, I focused on the fact that I needed mercy. That I was a sinner and something was wrong both with me and the world. Franny seemed to think the same thing, but we missed the first part of the prayer. When Zooey thought of it, he reflected on "Lord Jesus Christ." Ego comes second to that. For some reason, God did decide to create Ego(s), opinions, feelings, and sentiments when He made the universe. He wanted to give us  the ability to say things are good or things are bad, and to say that it was a bad move on His part is an exercise of our own Ego. But this is not our system to dictate, just to be a part of. We're in God's world, not ours.

Zooey is saying that Ego is not a disgusting thing. It isn't bad for people to have opinions and thoughts and feelings. What is bad is to get stuck in them. What is bad is when the fact that we're sinners and need mercy takes the focus off "Lord Jesus Christ."

People can be wrong and often are. We do bad things and are hurt by people around us. Self-centeredness can lead to a variety of disgusting habits. Yet looking at these parts of life is only helpful for so long. Instead of focusing on how wrong we can be, we can rejoice in the fact that we have the freedom to make decisions. Instead of being plagued by how much we can be hurt, how about we stay in awe at the fact that we can even feel to begin with. Instead of looking at ourself and asking how to preserve that, why not just be glad that we have a self? I think, therefore, I can be thankful for thinking.

To put it simply, we're plagued so much over the implications of our feelings and thoughts that we are never just simply amazed at the fact that we can feel and think. We're so worried about winning an argument with a lost soul that we do not marvel at the fact that two soul's are finding a way to commune an touch each other through a transmission of sounds waves that our ears are configured to both pick up and our mind has been trained to decipher. Though it's important to talk about whether something or someone is good or bad, right or wrong, we should never lose sight that it is a thing or a person.

When you pray (when I pray), you should never lose sight that you are trying, first and foremost, to talk to someone. When you talk to someone (when I talk to someone), you should always be talking with them, not just using them as another means of viewing yourself. Maybe I could have a conversation where I learn about them instead of trying to learn about myself. I need to focus more on the first part of the prayer. The part that  I glossed over in both 10 finger prayers.

"Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner."