Get Busy Livin'
There is this a great scene in Shawshank Redemption when Morgan
Freeman’s character Red, who is an old man that has been in prison since he was
a teenager, is before a parole board for the umpteenth time. The chairman asks
if Red considers himself to be sufficiently ‘rehabilitated’. In Red’s response
he says that there isn’t a day that goes by that he doesn’t wish he could talk
to his teenage self and impart the perspective that he’s been able to attain
through years of hard and monotonous prison life – perspective about the value of life, the
nature of good and evil and the importance of responsibility.
As I work with young people in the pivotal years of junior high,
high school and college – years of self-discovery, transition and commitment –
I’m so often reminded of that scene. When I get in front of a group of
passionate and gifted young Christians, the message that I find myself wanting
to articulate time and again is that we can only experience true freedom
through the grace of God and through making a genuine gift of ourselves. I’ve
realized that that’s the message that I come back to because that’s the message
I wish I could drive home to my teenage self (and certainly still need to hear every day).
I wish I could grab by the collar my snotty eight grader self –
disrespectful to my family and completely wrapped up in the insecure, selfish,
consumptive life style of suburbia. I would plead with him to get out of his
own head and experience the liberation of living even for five minutes for
other people.
I wish I could sit down with the confused and befuddled high
schooler that I was and ask him if he was truly happy. Did he experience joy
and peace in the relationships he had with girls and friends – relationships
defined by the experiences he was able to have, the fun and joy that they were
able to bring him? I would ask him what it was about the most truly joyful
people in his life that brought them joy, fulfillment and ultimately freedom.
“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to
the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it
produces much fruit.” – John 12:24
I was so blessed as a young man to have some stellar examples of joyful,
selfless living. My late grandfather Jim Davidson was one such example.
Everyone he interacted with knew that he lived his life to serve and know and
to love other people – from the garbage man to the butcher at the grocery store
to his grandchildren to his men’s group at church to his wife and daughter and
son-in-law. Another example is my Grandma Mitzi. She, like my Grandpa Jim, had
a unique Christ-like ability to be utterly present to people. It might have
only been for five to ten minutes but at a large family gathering she would sit
down next to you, grab your arm and ask, ‘Honey, how are you?’ She would smile and gaze straight into your eyes and
receive your answer.
Deeply affirming, thoroughly generous and without any agenda she
wanted to know about you for the
simple and beautiful reason that she loved you.
Not some version of you that she hoped you were deep down or some version of
you that she hoped you’d develop into. She loved you.
Reading Fr. Jacques Philippe’s Interior
Freedom I realized that this love that she and Gramps exemplified was a beautiful
example of the radical, merciful love of the Father. It’s not that my
grandparents did not want the best for me – which often included growth in some
virtue and freedom from some imperfection or vice. They doubtless longed for
such things because they wanted the best for me and didn’t want me to suffer
the pain and loss that sin brings. Nevertheless, their love was not rooted in
my living up to a standard or my potential or realized growth in virtue and
holiness. They simply loved me for my own sake – wrinkles, warts, teenage angst
and all.
“The person God loves with the tenderness of a Father, the person
he wants to touch and to transform with his love, is not the person we’d have
liked to be or ought to be. It’s the person we are. God doesn’t love ‘ideal
persons’ or ‘virtual beings'. He loves actual, real people. He is not interested
in saintly figures in stained glass windows, but in us sinners. A great deal of
time can be wasted in the spiritual life complaining that we are not like this
or not like that, lamenting this defect or that limitation, imagining all the
good we could do if, instead of being the way we are, we were less defective,
more gifted with this or that quality or virtue, and so on. Here is a waste of
time and energy that merely impedes the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.” - Interior Freedom, Jacques Philippe,
32-33.
One of my most poignant memories from childhood is of playing golf
with my grandfather when I was probably 12 or 13 years old. He and my grandma came
up to visit during the summer and on a weekday afternoon he took me to a nearby
course to play a round. I remember being moody and selfish and just generally
funky and unhappy. I don’t remember him saying anything particular, but I still
vividly and painfully remember him seeming sad and disappointed. He wasn’t
disappointed in judgmental way: “This idiot kid is so miserable to be with. I
wish he’d get over himself!” Rather he was disappointed in a more heartbroken
and fatherly way.
He and I had been best friends when I was a younger boy. I had idolized
him – his unflaggingly friendly and winsome demeanor, his athleticism, his career
success, his solid bearing in the community and his impeccable character.
I had probably been being a snot to my mom and sister earlier that
day and hadn’t improved much when we got to the golf course. I remember being
miserable and wanting it to be like the old days – free and easy and cheerful –
but in my sullen selfishness I couldn’t enter into those things: freedom, lightheartedness
and joy. I see now that my grandfather grieved the ill transformation that had
taken root in me.
Disappointed as he was he loved me. He didn’t push me away in my
ugliest time. He continued to hold me close and invite me in. When, praise God,
I came out of the darkest days of teenage angst he was still there by my side
and for that dedication he had an even more privileged position to mentor me in
the virtues of manliness.
Teenage years are always going to contain a disproportionate
amount of naval-gazing and preoccupation with ourselves. Nevertheless, the
happiest and most fulfilled people I knew then and now – whether teenagers,
young adults, or otherwise – are the folks whose lives are most completely
dedicated to the genuine and authentic loving of others.
Red’s pivotal piece of advice to the main character in Shawshank
Redemption is ‘Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.’ I don’t think there’s any
better advice. The only tweak I would make is the fullest human thriving comes
when we get busy living by dying to ourselves.
The paradox of Christian humanism is that only in a true gift of
self can we discover our true self. The heart of the Blessed Trinity is an
eternal, mutual exchange of self-gift. The heart of Christ is found in his
radical love exemplified by the humility of the incarnation and self-gift in
the crucifixion.
The vicious cycle of self-seeking drives us further and further
into our broken hearts and away from genuine love. The grace-filled cycle of
self-gift impels us to die to ourselves, affirm the lives of those around us
and leads us to the heart of God.
“Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is
incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to
him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it
his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been
said, is why Christ the Redeemer 'fully reveals man to himself'. If
we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the
Redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value
that belong to his humanity.” – St. John Paul II, Redemptor
Hominis, 10
The heart of our training for all of our high school and college students leading summer programs in our diocese was simply this: let’s do ourselves a huge favor
and let’s choose love and deny ourselves as often as we possibly can; because, if we do, by the
end of the summer we’ll be a much healthier, happier and holier versions
of ourselves. And, we’ll know what authentic love looks, smells, tastes, sounds
and feels like so that we can take that experience and live it out every day
hence.
Comments