There by the Grace of God Go I
If you grew up smoking pot in your formative years you probably listened to a bit of Bob Marley. Maybe that’s unfair, and everybody, even the less deviant of us, enjoyed the reggae stylings of Bob and the Wailers, but I do remember the distinct connection between him and the sacred herb. I also remember getting really into his music for a while. We all know the classics like ‘One Love’ and ‘Three Little Birds,’ but I bet you didn’t go to your local F.Y.E. to buy the 1978 album ‘Babylon by Bus’ like I did. The quality was shit, but from what I had read about Bob and his life, it seemed more true to character than the remastered version you’d hear at beach bars in the summer.
Being lyrically inclined as I am, I memorized his songs. In little league baseball as a twelve year old, I would sing ‘Buffalo Soldier’ to myself as I walked up to the plate to calm my nerves.
I was weird like that.
As I poured through his catalog, I noticed the interesting omission of the word ‘me’ in most, if not all of his tracks. Consider the opening line from his final ‘Redemption Song’,
“Oh pirates yes they rob I, sold I to the merchant ship
Minutes after they took I, from the bottomless pit.”
Neither line is grammatically correct and, in my mind, the change didn’t really add to any type of rhyme scheme, so there must have been a reason for the replacement. A little searching around the internet and you find that this language has much to do with Rastafarianism.
To hear it told from those close to him, Bob was a deeply religious man and followed this movement that came to popularity in his native Jamaica during the 1930’s. One of the more interesting thoughts within the movement is that the use of the pronoun ‘me’ separates us from God. By instead using ‘I’ you are recognizing that God exists within you and you cannot be separated from this divinity. Diving deeper, the phrase ‘I and I’ is utilized as a way of recognizing divinity within yourself and divinity within another. By recognizing that you both share the same divine quality, you recognize that we are all connected and that any good you do for another, you do for yourself. In this way, I find it similar to the Christian concept of The Holy Spirit or the Buddhist understanding of the word ‘karma.’
Then there’s grace. With this word, I immediately hear bagpipes in the distance. A four-piece outfit that plays in Disney’s Epcot released a live album where they introduce the most regularly requested bagpipe tune of all time, and the guitarist starts in with ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ But of course it’s ‘Amazing Grace.’ The Christian belief in grace centers around God’s free and unmerited favor, bestowed upon all manner of sinners, drunks and prodigal sons alike. It is his saving grace that comes to us in our darkest hours and brings us back to the light.
In the Avatar cartoon series, old Uncle Iroh once comforts his long struggling nephew to not give into despair with this sage wisdom,
‘In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself.
That is the meaning of inner strength.’
If you’ve read any of my previous work, you know that I don’t really care for the word hope, and in this instance, I’d love to replace it with ‘grace.’ You don’t need a far off God to grant you any type of grace. You give that to yourself. It’s not the way of God, but the way of the universe.
It’s a patient trust that allows all things to unravel the way that they should.
A newly discovered favorite of mine, Joy Oladokun, delivers a deeply soulful lament titled ‘Jordan’ where she recounts feeling abandoned and shackled to the lord after her baptism in that old and holy river. When a cruel and restricting religion fails her, she is saved by another who shows up with,
‘grace and whiskey on your breath.’
Grace doesn’t come to her from someone perfect. It comes from someone who struggles as well. Maybe someone who can commiserate with her story. An equal who she can rise up with together, rather than be pulled up by.
I’ve been thinking about grace lately. This space and patience that we try to give to others. To those who cut us off in traffic. To those who are late to yoga. To those who are trying to figure themselves out.
And I wonder if we’re not giving it to ourselves.
When we’re so close to our own situation, it’s difficult to see all the things we are doing well. It’s difficult to see the regular work that helps us make the secret sauce. Instead we only see the struggles. We only see the things that we are working on. The diet that we can’t seem to keep. The meditation schedule that gets pushed aside. The workouts that never get done.
If only we could give ourselves the same grace we give those around us.
Which brings us to our title. This proverb suggests that humankind’s fate is not in our own hands. It suggests that this God is who I must place my trust and patience in so that I may move forward in this life. But knowing that this God or universal substance exists within my being when I use the word “I”, and adding in the patience and understanding implied in the word “grace”, I believe that I may actually have everything that I need to go forward.
I grant myself the grace to fail as much as I succeed. I grant myself the grace of my vices and my shortcomings, knowing that those around me would do the same. Up treacherous peaks and down canyon roads, through dark forests and green fields, anywhere in this great big universe,
There By The Grace of God Go I.