1.4 The twist of grace
One night I went to a reading at a bookstore to hear an author promote her brand of spirituality. The minute she was done, an earnest woman sitting next to me turned and asked, “Are you a spiritual person?”
“No, not really.”
“Well, are you a religious person?”
“No, not even close.”
I heard a little humpff and she squinted at me as if to say, “Then what are you?” I didn’t want her to write me off. I wanted her to know that I’m a person of some depth who cares about the eternal questions, so I blurted in self–defense…
“I’m a moral person.”
That didn’t register with her. Without another word, she stood up, gave me her back, and walked away.
But for me this was a first. Instead of saying what I was not, calling myself a nonbeliever, I told her what I was…
Moral.
A definite identity.
Realizing this, I broke into a big smile.
Except…
I hated that word “moral” because it keeps such wretched company.
The loudest shouters about morality are righteous and judgmental and mean. They wield their morality like a bludgeon…
Follow our rules or we’ll punish you and we’ll be glad to do it.
But where did that word come from originally? We’re a social-group species and every group needs its own customs, rituals, and mores in order to keep itself together and on the same page.
It’s from mores that we get morality. It’s not optional. It’s the fundamental element of human community…
The most fundamental.
When people don’t trust their own hearts, they turn morality into a rigid set of rules to be obeyed, like a criminal code. But we can do so much better than that….
We can source our morality from nurturance.
We can make it relational instead of categorical.
We can make it nuanced instead of simpleminded.
We can make it responsive instead of intransigent.
Your morality is shaped by the way you answer these elemental questions…
How do I want to treat other people?
And…
How do I want them to treat me?
And, not to be overlooked, because this, too, is a moral question…
How do I want to treat myself?
Even though for years now, “moral” has been a very important word to me, I still worry about how people will hear it. So sometimes when I say it, I quickly add parenthetically…
(What I mean by “moral” is nurturance not attack.)
I do that because I don’t want people to misjudge me. Sometimes I throw this interruption into the conversation so often it gets annoying, once to the point where the other person said, “Alright already, I get what you mean.”
I want to make sure they understand that I’ve chosen for myself…
A morality that guides me in making compassionate decisions.
And I’m not talking about nice–guy compassion, but gutsy compassion. Radical compassion. Upgraded compassion.
So to me, “moral” means…
Mutual nurturance and mutual advocacy.
Where “mutual” entails reaching across divisions to take the best possible care of each other. Because…
We need each other now like never before.
And most importantly, “moral” means to me…
Engaging in the mission to upgrade love.
Because I think of this as a moral project, embodying the sweetest, yet fiercest kind of morality ever.
But out in the wider world, “moral” continues to be…
A battleground word.
Still I haven’t found a substitute I like better. “Ethics” is okay, but to me it feels too academic and legal. “Moral” has historical significance and emotional resonance, and increasingly, at least for me, warmth.
“Moral” is simply…
How we do our togetherness.
Which is not really simple.
A stand I take these days is…
To live by what’s deepest in my heart instead of by what’s deepest in my genes.
This makes no sense biologically because our genes generate our hearts and everything else we are. Yet the distinction works for me. It’s true that evolution is driving us down a path that leads to extinction. I don’t believe we’re going to be able to stop this progression.
And yet, evolution allows us to do this most amazing thing…
To oppose our source—which is itself.
So I now believe that…
Human DNA is two biological strands of protein nucleotides plus one virtual strand of moral imagination.
And I call this third strand…
Our twist of grace.
Why grace? Because it feels like a gift. It’s not something evolution intended to give us, because evolution doesn’t intend anything. It can’t because it has no mind and no heart.
But we have both. And we have our impulse to fight. And we have this twist, and…
Our mission to upgrade love is made possible by this moral imagination of ours.
