Grace in the Shadows

We only become enlightened as the ego dies to its pretenses and we begin to be led more by soul and by Spirit. That dying is something we are led through by the awesome and quiet grace of God and by the hard work of confronting our own shadow. As we learn to live in Divine Space, we will almost naturally weep over our former mistakes as we recognize that we ourselves are often the very thing that we hate and attack in other people. Weeping, by the way, is much more helpful and true than attacking, hating, or denying our sin—maybe not literal weeping, but sin-cere, non-self-hating compunction for our mistakes. (Compunction was the subtle word that the mystics often used to describe a regretful ownership of our sins, but without descending into abusive self-hatred.) Only grace can teach us how to do that, yet only then can we begin to become and to live the Great Mystery of compassion, even toward ourselves. How we treat ourselves is how we will usually treat other people too. The person who was vindictive to us today has been vindictive in his own mind since early this morning. She is punitive toward us because she has been punitive toward herself for years—without even knowing it. God's one-of-a-kind job description is that God actually uses our problems to lead us to the full solution. God is the perfect recycler and, in the economy of grace, nothing is wasted, not even our worst sins or our most stupid mis-takes. God does not punish our sins but uses them to soften our hearts toward everything.

—Richard Rohr, A Lever and a Place to Stand