After All These Years . . .

I finished Peter Gomes’ book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. Within a few pages of the end, he quotes Paul Tillich, German theologian, whose book, The Courage to Be, was read over and over by my generation of students. We didn’t have to be religion or philosophy majors. Tillich was well enough known throughout the college speaking and preaching circuit that by the time I was in college, we spoke of him like we knew him or had sat in one of his classes. My undergraduate years were the last four years of his life. I find it impressive and moving that Gomes would find Tillich’s words so prophetic and important fifty years later that he quotes them at the climax of his own special book.

And . . . I find it particularly moving that the passage he quotes is the one that moved me So Deeply one day as an undergraduate. I was sitting in a small music library in the Fine Arts Building, reading what had been assigned. I was depressed, overwhelmed and feeling just plain awful. I didn’t care about school, life, friends, family or anything else. In this mood, I was reading the assigned chapters from Tillich and came across these words:

You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask fr the name now; perhaps you will find it later. D not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted. If that happens to us, we experience grace.

In that moment, in that little music library, caring for nothing, I found grace. I took Tillich at his word. I simply accepted. It was a long time before anything else changed or happened or was intended. And that was ok. I was accepted just the way I was. I have lived out of that knowing for the rest of my life. ~ with blessings