Fall on your knees

some thoughts on grace, failures, and the soul feeling its worth

O Holy Night!
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior's birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear'd and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary soul rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

Fall on your knees
Oh hear the angel voices
Oh night divine
Oh night when Christ was born

 It’s no secret that O Holy Night is my favorite Christmas song. I know it’s a bit much, but there are lines in that classic that never fail to get me.

I’ll be honest here. I never until this morning thought about the song’s use of the word “pining”. And just like a 7th grader having to write a paper - I looked up the definition. The first entry is for the more common use - a longing for something. But the second is where we find ourselves, friends:

2. failing gradually in health or vitality, especially from grief, regret, or longing: The day after the altercation he took sick, and continued in a pining and languishing condition till his death, which soon ensued.

Failing gradually from grief, regret or longing due to sin and error. (I refer my readers once again to Spufford’s definition of sin: the human propensity to fuck things up)

Do we not still lay in sin and error pining? Has our propensity as humans to fuck things up not indeed fucked a few things up - like the health and vitality of the planet and our communities and our relationships and even our own bodies?

Yes. Yes it has.

But I would argue that this does not in fact mean that I should despair, it simply means that I, like everyone else, need some help.

What I need is not a longer to-do list. What I need is help. What I need is for my soul to feel its worth---- and that worth simply cannot be attached to cultivating virtue and trying harder to finally be enough.

I mean, holy shit are there a choir of voices telling me my worth based on:

how successful I am,

how successful my children are,

how attractive I am,

if I have or have not somehow managed to get older without looking as though I have “aged”,

do I meditate,

do I eat sugar,

am I doing enough with what I have been given,

do I have the perfectly timed and formulated response to every kind of suffering and injustice that happens to every person each minute of the day across the entire planet.

My soul can never feel its worth if it has to earn it.

(I mean, trying to get there may make the wellness industry and Instagram influencers and TV evangelists a lot of cash but, as my AA friend says, that’s just trying to buy bread at a hardware store.)

I think that this is exactly what Mary, mother of our Lord, understood: that what qualifies us for God’s grace (the “help” I need) isn’t our goodness – what qualifies us for God’s grace is nothing more than our need for God’s grace. 

When Mary sings of God in the Magnificat, she didn’t say that God looked with favor on her virtue. She didn’t say that God looked with favor upon her activism. She didn’t say that God looked with favor on the fact that she had tried so hard that she finally had become the ideal version of herself.

No.

God looked with favor on her lowliness.

And yet then what do I do but constantly curse my own lowliness. Obsess about my flaws and shortcomings. Berate myself for my failings and defects of character; for not trying hard enough to become my ideal self.

But our failings and weakness and mistakes are God’s perfect entry points. It is our lowliness and our humility, not our strength and our so-called virtues where God does God’s very best work. 

Which makes me wonder if perhaps our obsession with self-improvement is really just a form of atheism disguised as spirituality. 

In Neal Brennan’s new Netflix stand up special, BLOCKS, he says:

I shouldn’t even say I’m an atheist. Let’s say I’m agnostic about my atheism, right?*Atheists are such smug hypocrites, by the way. Atheists will be like, “You pray to a god? That’s so silly. Can I show you my vision board real quick?”

I know a lot of white atheists. I don’t know many Black atheists. Not none, just not many. I got a theory about why there’s not many Black atheists. Here goes. Atheism is really like the height of white privilege. It really is. Religion says, “Can we interest you in an afterlife?” And white people are like, “No, thank you. How much better could it be? I’ll just take my supplements and see what happens.”

Because for some, to be in right relationship with God is to make ourselves so righteous or good or woke that we never need to bother God for help – meaning if we progressively sanctify ourselves, the good news is that we won't even really need grace!

But for others, for those who suffer from addiction and mental illness, for those with unprocessed trauma, for the poor and the poor of spirit, for the incarcerated and all who live in a desperation that precludes the delusion of self-sufficiency – we know that right relationship with God is actually knowing just how in need of grace we are.

Which means, if you are lowly in this life, or if you struggle with your flaws - the things that make you weak, the mistakes you keep making, that’s good news friends.

So fall on your knees.

Fall on your knees before a God who Mary bore into this world as delicate unprotected, unarmed, defenseless, lowly flesh.  Fall on your knees before the one who loves without caution, without measure, without concern for pre-existing conditions. Fall on your knees before a God in whose grace you can relax and try less hard and know that your flawed, imperfect, lumpy self is so totally loved and worthy to be loved.

And in this season of over consumption and unmet expectations - in this season of family obligations and “I should feel happier than I do” or “I’m deeply happy and don’t feel like I can share that since so many people are miserable” in this season of loneliness and warmth and cookies and toxic nostalgia and having way too many people around, in this season of the very longest nights - may your soul feel its worth.

And when the regret and grief about your errors creeps in, be gentle and maybe just congratulate yourself for being someone in whom God’s grace is at work. I’ll try and do the same.

*(12-16-22) I added this first line of Brennans after a reader kindly and legitimately pointed out to me that this post was the first time she as an atheist felt put-down. This is a blindspot for me and I was grateful for her thoughtful response.

---

Also….

You can read more Advent/Christmas stuff from me here:

And the soul felt its ____

and here:

People Are All We've Got