Earlier this week, I was doing housework listening to something on YouTube through my ear buds. I was working away as my podcast ended and then YouTube did its thing. It just started feeding me videos that went straight to my ears with no warning, because I didn’t know where my phone was in the house. And what came into my ears was an interview of an actress with Stephen Colbert. This is not my usual choice because everyone knows I only watch British murder mysteries. I had no idea who she was, but a little way into the interview, I had to stop what I was doing, find my phone, and watch this thing. Her story was so compelling  because this woman was talking about her journey to way of the cross, albeit a secular version.

She didn’t talk about God or Jesus, but she did talk about her life and how a conversation between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper on grief changed her life.

Her name is Katherine LaNasa and she is an actress who had been out of work for a while, when she didn’t want to be. She was also recovering from cancer. And she talked about how she laid the burden of blame for all that, all of life’s bumps on herself. Perhaps she didn’t get a role because she messed up a meeting or she shouldn’t have used hormones to get pregnant and that’s why she got cancer or she should have tried harder to stay younger-looking in the cutthroat reality of Hollywood. She took all the blame of her struggle on herself.

And then she listened to Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper have a conversation about grief. When she summarizes what Stephen said that was so profound to her, she almost cried on his couch even though I believe it had been years before. She summarized him as saying that grief and loss are a part of our human experience that need to be included in our care, love, and acceptance. Not only can we not avoid loss or difficulty, it’s the grief and loss that make us more able to connect, love, and be compassionate. His words opened a path of a new way of living.

She talked about how she lived without grace for herself from a young age, but this conversation reached her in her dark moment and allowed her to be a little easier on herself and on life. She began to forgive all the ways that life wasn’t perfect and she wasn’t perfect. She began to allow herself to be just who she was, an aging woman in a world and industry that is not often kind to the aging female body. And she was a person recovering from cancer who struggled to find work. She was no longer the king or queen of any mountain. She accepted that reality, was kind to herself in her grief, and eventually discovered the many blessings that opened up to her because she accepted and began to even love what was real.  

We have two paths in life and in our relationship with God that are offered to us in our culture. One is described as being about ascending. Ascending religion would mean that it’s our job to get to God or be good enough for God. Or, in related fashion, that we need to escape this fallen and broken world in order to experience the holiness of God. The other path is described as descending, meaning that God comes to us and that there’s really no ladder for us to climb. God is already here and moving toward us, all the way into the dank and dark basements of our realities, our fears, and our brokenness.

In general, would you agree that we live in culture that is very committed to the ascending path? We want to achieve, do all the things right to that we are insulated against the difficulties of life. We want to be better than “those” people, whoever those people happen to be for you. Those who are addicted. Those who are illiterate. Those who are unemployed and have cancer, like Katherine LaNasa. Those who are … fill in the blank, which we will do in just a little bit.

What Jesus is saying here in his Beatitudes is the Holy God who is perfect and eternal, who holds the whole world in his hand, loves you, blesses you all the way down into your crevices where fear and shame and all the other stuff lingers.

This is what I heard Katherine LaNasa saying. She was very busy wanting to ascend, to keep her head above water, to keep her career and her body up there in the land of not just the surviving, but the thriving, as well. And she thought it was all up to her to drag herself up by the nape of her own neck. But ultimately that is exhausting and it doesn’t work in the end. We are limited and reality has a way of winning. So, she let herself be as she was and discovered that grace exists. She found that she was indeed blessed by and through her brokenness. That’s the good news right there.

In a world that tells you that you know you’re blessed by all the “winning” in your life, the good news of Jesus is we are most blessed by God when we need God the most. Wherever and whenever we need God the most is when and where God most shows up for us and most blesses us with comfort, mercy, justice, and renewal. And ultimately that’s God’s action, not ours. When we take the path of descending, we can stop trying so very hard. We can stop sucking in our guts to fit into pants that just don’t fit anymore. God loves us right here and provides what we need.

The awkward truth of all this is no one like to receive grace. Not really. We don’t want to need it. We like ascending ourselves, even as we like to give grace to others. A friend of mine in Minnesota this last week said it’s weird being the ones who really need the prayers. I’m sure that’s been true for all of us at various times. We want our lives to be lovely, as we prayer for others who are having a hard time of it.

Eventually there comes moments, like there was for Katherine, when we have to lay down the burden of wanting to ascend on our own power. And in those moments, grace abounds. I think this is why Nancy loved her time at Lighthouse Ministries so much and she will love it again, hopefully. She hung out with and served homeless folks who were beyond pretending that they don’t need grace. These were folks without adequate housing, food, or material safety. They needed grace and they knew it. There was no room for our usual pretense of having it all together or pretending we really can, with enough effort, win at life and just keep on winning. 

The greeters gave everyone a piece of paper that says “Blessed am I, the…” Below that, there are lines for you to fill out what the brokenness of this world is like in you. Blessed am I, the weary, the scared, the anxious, the angry. What’s it like in that dank basement of your heart? And across from that line that describes you or that part of you, there’s a line for you to say what God will do to meet your need. Remember, it’s not up to us, to haul ourselves up and out of trouble. What is your prayer for God’s action for the brokenness of the world that lives in you? How might God inspire action in you, if action is indeed what’s needed?

The other side of the sheet reads, “Blessed are they, the …” On these empty lines, I encourage you to think of other groups of folks in the world who you worry about. Blessed are those who are afraid of violence, etc. OR maybe right about someone who you might have a very hard time loving right now. Who would that be? After all, Jesus was preaching to all these people who his society had a very hard time loving and he came for them. Who is this for you?  

This might take some time for you to write these in a way that these ultimately become prayers for yourself and others. For example, you may think of folks who you want to put in the ol’ hate category. The easy thing to do, particularly when we hate people, is to pretend we know their motivations and what their actual experience is like. For example, if someone is engaged in arms dealing (someone I would find easy to demonize), it would be a mistake for me to assume that they are 100% excited or even totally indifferent about the people who die because of their dealings. So, instead of saying blessed are the arms dealers, we might say blessed are the conflicted. Blessed are the confused. Blessed are the ones who see no other way. Or even, blessed are the mentally ill. We can imagine their dark and dank basements, too, and pray for them in that place.

At the end of the day, the people we feel comfortable condemning are still people who are beloved by God. And we don’t get to take that away from them. Neither do we get to take that blessing away from ourselves.

Our world tends to insist or at least insinuate that our suffering, setbacks, losses, and suffering are due to our own faults that we alone need to fix. We need to strive and ascend and overcome. But the truth is, the good news is, that we can relax a bit, breathe deep, let our bellies soften, and know that we are blessed by God’s love, action, renewal, and grace. We can indeed soften our hearts for ourselves and each other, because we are blessed, loved, and wanted by God, our holy Creator. This is the way of the cross and the way of Jesus.

AMEN