Radically Redeeming Ordinariness
I was born on the cusp of dawn, near back of beyond, on the silent banks of a lonesome lake where rainbow trout swim wild and free.
Fed since birth of a strict diet of poetry and song about Ireland’s rebel cause. Weakness and surrender were simply nowhere to be found in the tall tales, myths, and lingua franca of my formation. The fighting Irish simple never give in to an oppressor.
Many decades later, I recall standing outside a meeting of sober booze hounds in Limerick one Saturday morning. Now Limerick could be a rough in parts—no shortage of rebels—and this location fit the rough in parts description perfectly.
Out of the corner of one eye, I noticed a particularly bedraggled man. He was as thin as a wisp and looked like he had turned rough sleeping into an art form. Clearing it had been some days since his haggard face had seen a razor. And his ill-fitting clothes were a perfect match for his unshaven face. He was without question a man of shabby shoes.
I didn’t approach him using the convenient rationalization that his troubles were such that he would need a better friend than a fella like me who was just passing through for an hour or two.
Not for the first time, or the last, the age-old wisdom of not judging a book by the cover had escaped me. Imagine my surprise when the meeting got underway, and it was this bag of bones rough sleeper who shuffled awkwardly up to the microphone as the guest speaker.
He was amazing, fully fluent in the Irish gift of the gab. The man was like a prophet of old. He told his story of how he had once been a highflyer, a man who took no prisoners in his fight for power, prestige, and wealth. But during it all, he grew a hole in the soul that almost ate him alive. Finally, with all the trappings gone, he stumbled upon a meeting of sober booze hounds and his life turned around.
The fight, he declared, with all the gusto of a prophet in our age, was not against an external oppressor, but the greatest oppressor of them all, the ego-self. “Deep inner peace” says he is the prize to be won. But only the biggest losers receive it. Give in to win, surrender entirely and inner peace is available by the truckload. This is a rebellion like no other, and it is an entirely inside job of surrender.
Turns out this bag of bone spiritual warrior had been living by this code of powerlessness for over two decades. And he had another spiritual trump card in his repertoire. He had perhaps the greatest all spiritual gifts available to us mortals, the gift of a humble heart. He didn’t speak about humility; this would have been superfluous because he was its manifestation writ large.
Today when I wander down this or that road, in my own shabby shoes. If I stumble upon someone who looks like they are well acquainted with the art of rough sleeping. I try to remember that I just might be in the sacred company of a prophet of our time.
Clothes, my dear comrades, do not make the man, but spiritual surrender most definitely does.
– Cormac Stagg, author of The Quest for a Humble Heart