Broken Eggs, Lent and The Journey of Learning Sticky Grace
By Richard Plass
As best I remember, it was a rather typical childhood summer morning. I was in the neighborhood, five years of age, and not doing anything in particular, but enjoying a new day marked by bright sunlight and cool morning air. It was another whole day to live life! My mother appeared at the back door of our home and called out saying, “Richard, go collect the eggs from the chicken coop.” Her instructions were cryptic, nothing about “be sure to take a pail” or “take the basket by the door,” just “collect the eggs.” An average morning collecting eggs would have me finding two or three eggs, a reasonable number for a five year old to handle. Gathering eggs wasn’t my favorite thing to do, since all too often the hens were not inclined to leave their nest. The hens, in my five year old opinion, were stubborn, resenting any form of disturbance and inclined to express their displeasure with their nasty habit of pecking at my hand when I tried to get to the eggs. I’m not sure how, but I managed to secure the eggs, which on that morning happened to be a total of five.
After a bit of strategizing, having realized five eggs were too many for my hands to hold, I decided the simplest and most convenient option was to simply put the eggs in the pockets of my pants. This was a severe miscalculation! I didn’t have the presence of mind to reckon with the big step down I would have to navigate exiting the chicken coop. So on my first step out of the coop with eggs stuffed in my pockets, two eggs broke. The remainder of my journey to the back door of our home only made matters worse, as it pertained to the condition of the eggs. When I finally reached the back door, four out of the five eggs were oozing out of my pockets and down the inside of my legs. Even at the age of five I had the insightful realization, this isn’t going to go well.
When my mother came to the back door I offered her the one remaining unbroken egg, but in a matter of seconds she saw the yellow yoke all over my pant legs. She wasn’t happy. She was making cake batter and needed the eggs. I’m not sure about the details of what transpired, but I have the substance of the memory of my mother’s disappointment in me and my own sense of deep self-disappointment. I was five, I don’t recall any earlier recollection in which I felt like I had failed so significantly. I suspect the sense of failure has stuck in my memory so vividly simply because my pant legs stuck to me like they were glued to my skin!
Some have written to the effect that our childhood grandiosity (everything is good about me and my world) needs to take some real emotional hits in the journey of building the first stage of our sense of self. If we don’t have a sense of failure early on in the journey, the psychological structures of the self or the ego will prove to be frail, brittle, rigid, intolerant and self-indulgent. There is this necessary matrix of having a responsibility, failing in light of some law or standard, and then dealing with the feelings of failure mixed with dread, guilt, shame and fear. This necessary failure is essential if we are to make movement past childhood egocentricity. I learned in a very sticky and messy way what it felt like to fail, to experience self-disappointment, a solid dose of guilt and a good measure of fear, the moment my mother looked at me.
Lent is the season when for forty days we engage a spiritual journey to consider the sacrifice of our Lord, and in so doing to soberly reckon with who we are, what we have done or not done, and what we are doing. It is after all, our sin that made the Son’s sacrifice necessary. It is not that we need to travel down memory lane to dig up old failures. It is quite enough to stay in the current moment and consider those attitudes, dispositions, behavioral habits, and words that leave us all falling short of the glory of God. Lent is that time when in honest self-examination we might well be lead to some profound feelings of displeasure and disappointment with ourselves. It is precisely this sense of failure in doing God’s will, coupled with our deep sense of self-disappointment and displeasure that makes Lent at times an arduous journey for the soul.
When David cried out to God upon recognition of his sin, “against you and you only have I sinned,” it seems to me an aspect of David’s contrition is his deep self-displeasure. Self-displeasure and disappointment coupled with his sense of failure, guilt, anxiety and shame, all of which accentuates his betrayal of the Lord he loved and who he believed loved him. It is this very caldron of internal pain along with self-disappointment and displeasure, that when we live awake and see ourselves we must face head on, stay with, and then embrace as a true part of ourselves! This is the spiritual journey of Lent. We are easily distracted from what is real and true, especially if it is our failure and ensuing self-disappointment.
But it is grace that has brought us our failure. “First there is the falling, then there is the rising and both are the grace of God.” It is grace that helps us embrace our failure and self-disappointment for betraying love. It is grace that frees us from self-condemnation and fear. It will be God’s grace that brings us forgiveness, and it is grace in the end that will bring us home. Therese of Lisieux said, “If you are willing to serenely bear being unpleasant to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter.” I don’t think Therese was contemplating minor scratches on the soul’s surface. I think she was considering places deep within the soul where sin’s failures leave profound marks of betrayal and the subsequent feelings of being unpleasant to the Lord and to ourself.
My journey with broken eggs in my pocket was by grace, the first step in learning to bear being unpleasant to myself. And there has been and will be more occasions to come, and God’s grace will thankfully hold them all. The grace of God shall do the same for all of us no matter what gets broken and no matter how deep the breaking. Grace has saved us and nothing in all creation will separate us form the love of God in Christ. The grace of God is a sticky grace clinging to us, holding us no matter what. And thank God for this, for in this season of Lent we especially come to learn through the experience of failure and self-displeasure of the sticky grace of God, and it is precisely here that we all find rest!
