The Thorn Is a Gift
Friday, August 1, 2025
Struggling to overcome her persistent envy of another writer, author Anne Lamott found comfort in St. Paul’s struggle to accept his own imperfection:
Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, where he talks about the thorn in his side [2 Corinthians 12:7–10], is his spiritual autobiography, his confessing out loud to how shaming life in the flesh was for him. And in his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul wrote that he hated the things he couldn’t stop doing [Romans 7: 15, 19]…. He had what I have, something awful and broken and stained inside. He was a powerful, learned man, teaching and following the Torah, reaping power’s rewards, yet it all left him desperate….
[Paul] asked God over and over again to remove this thorn, but God said no. God said that grace and mercy had to be enough, that nothing awful or fantastic that Paul did would alter the hugeness of divine love. This love would and will have the last say. The last word will not be our bad thoughts and behavior, but mercy, love, and forgiveness. God suggested, Try to cooperate with that. Okay? Keep your stupid thorn; knock yourself out.
What was the catch? The catch was that Paul had to see the thorn as a gift. He had to want to be put in his place, had to be willing to give God thanks for this glaring new sense of humility, of smallness, the one thing anyone in [their] right mind tries to avoid. Conceit is intoxicating, addictive, the best feeling on earth some days, but Paul chose instead submission and servitude as the way to freedom from the bondage of self.
Lamott explores the challenge of tolerating our imperfect selves and the mercy that saves us anyway:
Our secrets sometimes feel so vile and hopeless that we should all jump off a cliff. Then we might remember something quirky and ephemeral once restored us or a beloved to sanity when we were in a very bad way. We remember that an unlikely invisible agency made up of love, truth, and camaraderie helped with the alcoholism or debt or heartbreak a few years ago. And we practice cooperating with that force for change, because who knows—it might help again now.
Micah says to do justice—follow the rules, do what you’re supposed to do—but to love mercy, love the warmth within us, that flow of generosity. Love mercy—accept the acceptance; receive the forgiveness, whenever we can, for as long as we can. Then pass it on….
Love and mercy are sovereign, if often in disguise as ordinary people…. Over and over, in spite of our awfulness and having squandered our funds, the ticket-taker at the venue waves us on through. Forgiven and included, when we experience this, that we are in this with one another, flailing and starting over in the awful beauty of being humans together, we are saved.
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John Chaffee 5 On Friday
August 1, 2025
1.
“For, in a word, if one thinks himself made beautiful by gold, he is inferior to gold; and he that is inferior to gold is not lord of it.”
– Clement of Alexandria, 2nd Ct. Early Church Father
We as human beings experience a sense of lack, of not being enough of ‘something.’ That elusive ‘something’ leads us down odd and sometimes terrible pathways to find something to fill that sense of lack.
But what if the Gospel is not that there is something that can fill that lack, as if there is something outside of ourselves that we can be promised to have someday, and instead is that we are loved infinitely, even with our lack.
Our lack is not something to run from or to pathologically chase after a solution for.
Our lack does not mean that we are inferior to anything. Our lack reminds us that we are human, and that to be human implies the need for a certain amount of humility.
2.
“Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground. Pretending you’re moral, saying you’re moral is not the same as acting morally.”
– Alan Dershowitz, American Law Professor
It is the second sentence here that struck me.
“Pretending you’re moral.”
Wow. That is the temptation, isn’t it? To project out a False Self that is more moral than we are, because we want the reputation of being moral without the responsibility or the integrity necessary to be moral?
As I have said in other newsletters, the older I get, the more I appreciate the classical virtues. It is a lighthearted thing and eases the conscience to live a life that does not need to be hidden or defended. It is, in my life experience, so much better to live a moral life for the benefits it gives us in the here and now.
Every so often this past week, I have thought about situations in which people in the news are not living integrated lives of virtue. For instance, when a politician, community leader, or even a family member has their darkness unveiled for all to see, there is probably a strange sense of terror at people’s responses, but also a sense of relief that their fabricated life is no longer necessary. This is probably also the moral of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
3.
“Everyone of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self… We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.”
– Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk
The ability to tell ourselves the uncomfortable truths is a hallmark of maturity, and possibly also holiness.
4.
“A monk is a man who considers himself one with all men because he seems constantly to see himself in every man.”
– Evagrius Ponticus, 4th Ct. Turkish Ascetic
According to St. Paul, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
The more and more we hold ourselves as separate and different and other than our neighbors or enemies, the more fractured the world becomes.
I guess what stands out to me is that for Evagrius Ponticus, a “monk” is an integrated and spiritually mature human being, and such a person identifies WITH others rather than APART from others.
5.
“The wicked flee though no one pursues,
but the righteous are as bold as a lion.”
I once had this verse come to mind in the middle of the night.
I awoke and sat up, and said to myself, “Proverbs 28:1,” and immediately fell back asleep. In the morning, though, I remembered what I said to myself and looked up this passage. I had no recollection of ever reading that verse.
That morning, nearly twelve years ago, was the first and only time that I think God spoke to me in a way that I could not comprehend. A Scripture reference out of nowhere? It was odd and yet beautiful.
The righteous person has no reason to flee, even if everyone is chasing them. The wicked, on the other hand, will desperately run away even if no one is chasing them.
Man, I’d love to hear a whole sermon about that.
Or I’ll make a podcast about it. Stay tuned.
