Episode 49: From Shame to Acceptance - Unpacking the Power of Grace
Dr. Ray Mitsch embarks on an exploration of grace, a concept deeply woven into the fabric of relationships and faith. He begins by establishing the Outpost as a digital community designed to facilitate connection and understanding through the core values of authenticity, trust, grace, and intimacy. These values not only serve as guiding principles for individual interactions but also create a framework for experiencing and sharing grace in a meaningful way. Throughout the episode, Dr. Mitsch raises thought-provoking questions about the nature of grace, particularly examining why it is often perceived as scandalous or difficult to fully embrace, especially within the Christian community.
The dialogue shifts to the impact of shame on personal and relational growth, with Dr. Mitchell articulating how many individuals become ensnared in a cycle of guilt and self-reproach. He emphasizes that grace is essential for breaking free from these patterns, offering an alternative path towards healing and self-acceptance. The episode highlights the importance of understanding grace as an active, transformative force rather than a passive concept, encouraging listeners to reflect on how they can embody grace in their everyday lives. By contrasting grace with the constraints of shame, Dr. Mitchell illustrates the liberation that comes from accepting oneself and others unconditionally.
In concluding the episode, Dr. Mitchell paints a hopeful picture of the Outpost as a nurturing environment where individuals can engage with their struggles and aspirations in a supportive community. He envisions a space where grace is not merely a theological tenet but a lived experience, promoting deeper connections and authentic relationships. This episode serves as a compelling invitation for listeners to actively participate in a journey towards grace, fostering an understanding that true transformation comes from embracing one’s imperfections and extending that same grace to others.
Takeaways:
- The Outpost aims to build connections back to faith and strengthen existing ones.
- Authenticity, trust, grace, and intimacy are fundamental pillars of the Outpost community.
- Grace involves acceptance and creates a space for personal freedom and self-discovery.
- Transformation takes time, trust, and freedom, distinguishing it from mere reformation.
- Shame often hinders our ability to live graciously and accept ourselves as we are.
- Grace allows for learning and growth, fostering an environment where mistakes are expected.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Foreign everybody to another episode of the Outpost podcast.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I am Dr.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Ray Mitchell, your host, and thank you so much for joining me for another conversation, maybe monologue that you react to.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I can't really call it a dialogue because it's just me, but given that as it is, I have plenty to talk about in terms of the nature of relationships within the Outpost, and we've got lots of things beginning to develop on that front that are pretty big.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I think that will hit and we'll see when it hits.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I'm not going to make any promises, but I think we've got some important stuff to engage in and find out about and maybe learn a little bit more.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So the Outpost, if you've never listened before, is a digital place where we're trying to build bridges back to faith or to strengthen the ones that already exist.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And there are four fundamental pillars or values that we have that are part of this.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:One is authenticity, to be WYSIWYG people.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:What you see is what you get.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And we are oftentimes edited people.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:You might even say we're curated people as well.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And the second one is trust and living in trust, not only learning how to do that with one another, but also to live trustingly, otherwise known as faith, with our relationship with God and Jesus.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And then the third one is grace and learning.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:That's what I want to talk about tonight.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Grace, learning what exactly it is outside of a theological concept.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:What does it look like within the context of just living life with others and with myself and all of that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And then the final one is intimacy, my commitment to knowing and being known by others.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And what do I have to do to be able to do that?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And one of the key strategies for the Outpost is to develop places that are safe, to be able to be known and know others, and a space where the doubters and the wounded and the confused and beat up and beat down and bent and bruised, who feel like their lives are a disappointment to God, can feel accepted enough to know and know others.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And we want to be a place ultimately where we embody the truth of relationship and display what the heart of Jesus actually is.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that's not an easy task.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It sounds quaint and nice, and I think it's a bigger thing than we can imagine.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So wherever you are, get comfortable, settle in, and let's talk about some of these issues.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:One of the things that I've been talking and thinking about here, because we're starting on a new year, technically we're three episodes away from starting a new season for the outpost.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But what I've been thinking about is a reaffirmation and maybe a rediscussion of some of the issues of the fabric of relationships in the outpost or in the context of our relationships.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And if we follow the metaphor of the outpost being a place that is safe enough for us to be able to learn and to grow and to connect, connect and all of those things, then what's the nature of the relationships within that outpost?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Now, granted, it's a digital one, I certainly hope over time, or maybe over this year, Lord willing, is that we will actually have little outposts around where people can go and be safe and to be known and encouraged and supported and challenged and all of those things.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And what I want to do is unpack a little bit of what the relationships, what are the key issues or the key dimensions of these relationships?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And before we answer what is the nature of the relationships and outposts, I think we've got to dig just a little bit deeper.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And some questions that come to my mind as we go into that is why one of the things that I say, the four values is truth and grace.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And the whole idea of intimacy and authenticity, right?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And truth and grace and grace I want to focus in about, because we love to rhapsodize about grace, but we don't have the first clue about what it looks like to live in grace, to live graciously even.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so I think we have to ask the question, why is it that we find grace so scandalous as Christians?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I have read innumerable journals over the years of people and young people particularly, who really doubt that this is really true.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so if we doubt it and it really isn't that scandalous because it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It doesn't tilt our worlds a little bit because we turn it into something that it's not.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And we turn grace into a contract.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I will do this, so God will do that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And if I don't do this, then I'll get punished.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And grace doesn't give us a pass to do whatever we want.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I mean, Paul was pretty clear about that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And there was a whole group of Christians, baby Christians in the Roman Church at the time that he said that it had this notion floating around amongst them that we should sin all the more so that grace may abound.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And he just flatly closed the door on that and said, may it never be.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so because we don't understand what it looks like to live graciously, then we just simply turn it into something easier to understand.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that usually is a contract.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And therefore we make a contract that God never signs.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so that's the first question.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Second question is, for something that is so central and so fundamental to our faith, why are there so many obstacles to it?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Because you would think that, as the song, John Newton's song Amazing Grace implies, that it is so amazing that it's almost irresistible.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And in the absolute and even in the theoretical, that's true.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But our lives are not characterized by grace.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:The world, for sure, the world we live in, sure as heck isn't characterized by grace.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:There's very little grace in the world that we live in.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so for something that is so fundamental to our faith, and we espouse and rhapsodize and sermonize about why are there so many obstacles?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And then, excuse me, if we had it, and this is just a question of my own, and I don't know that anybody else really thinks it, but if we had it at one point in our lives, why did we lose it or how did we lose it?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And there's probably plenty of answers to that that are many more than I could ever begin to enumerate.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But what has contributed to our inability to not grasp, but live out grace in our internal world and in our external world?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And there are contributing factors.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I'm sure there are.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I certainly have seen them over the years of talking to people.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so there's a flip side of this coin.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So you take the coin of life, and on one side you have grace, and on the other side you have a dark.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:A dark side of it, and that is shame.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And we have to ask the question, why is shame so comfortable?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Because we talk grace, but we live shame ultimately.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And are there those of us who are more prone for being controlled by shame?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Is there people that seem to struggle with them more than others?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Well, let's be clear.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:We're all marinating in the same pot called shame to such a degree that we don't even notice it really, until somebody like me that starts pointing things out and we are politely saying thank you, and under our breath we're saying, leave me alone.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So how do we let go of living in shame?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But talking grace and why is never enough.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Such a problem.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Those are just a few questions that come to mind as a result of not only teaching about shame and grace, but also just being a part of the conversations with people.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And I couldn't even begin to count the number of hours that I put in in talking to people over 40 years of doing that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So the thing I want to highlight before I ever get into this at all is that I think all of us would say that Grace has the power to transform us.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But I think we have to ask, is there a difference between transformation and reformation?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Because Reformation, I think personally, and I look even at myself, reformation is far more comfortable than transformation is, because reformation takes personal effort and precision and measurement.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I got to compare it against something else.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But ultimately, all the building materials of me stay the same.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:They don't change at all.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And I think in a lot of cases, when we move from.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And Paul talks about this in Romans, he says, don't be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And conformed there carries with it the idea of the play doh factory.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I think those things are still around.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And you put the play doh in, and you have this lever that you push it through, and it presses it out into a form.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Merry Christmas.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:That is conformation.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It is being conformed to whatever the world dictates to us.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so he says, move from confirmation to transformation.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And I think, and this is my own private little theory, I think we put an additional step in there, and that step is reformation.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It is a very comfortable place to land, and it has all the benefits of looking like transformation.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so reformation is something that is within my grasp to do.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I can achieve it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I can create the objectives necessary to look the right way.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But it's like a movie set.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And you look behind, you might see a boulder wall, but then you look behind it, and it's just scaffolding.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so they've reformed the materials to look like a boulder wall, but it isn't.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so I think we settle for an intermediate step that we have inserted.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Paul didn't talk about it that way, and I think he didn't talk about it that way for a reason.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But he says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Now, transformation takes three things, just like Reformation does.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I said, reformation takes personal effort and precision and measurement.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Transformation takes time and trust and freedom.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And ultimately the materials are changed, which is us, right?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so time, trust, and freedom.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And the middle one is the stumbling block, because when I have to trust something or someone, then I lose some measure of control over the outcome because I'm trusting them with it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that's why I say all the time, and all my students who might be listening would be already reciting in their head what I'm about to say is that trust and control cannot coexist.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so one of the things that I want to show you, or I can't really show you, but I can point you to and describe it for you.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Because, of course, when.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:When you're doing a podcast like this, you really can't show anybody anything.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But there was a movie, I can't believe it's been a dozen years ago now, that was made of a very popular theatrical production called Les Mis.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Les Miserables.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And there are three different moments in.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:In that movie that are, I think, key to help us to understand what transformation looks like.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so the main character is a man by the name of Jean Valjean.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And if you're familiar with this, you probably know at least the story arc here.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And Valjean is unjustly imprisoned.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:He was imprisoned for 19 years and he's finally let out, but he's given a writ of some kind of suspension that he has to carry with him and present to anybody who might employ him, which essentially makes him unemployable.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so he goes from city to city and he lands in the doorway of a church as the only place he can find to sleep.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And the priest comes along and invites him in and feeds him, has a warm fire and essentially a warm bed.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And Valjean eats and lays down to go to sleep, but he stays awake because he knows that the church usually has some pretty valuable metals, silver, candlesticks and etc.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:That he could use to trade for more money.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so eventually he does.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:He gathers it all up, throws it in a bag and runs out.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And eventually he is caught and drugged back to the church with all the loot that he had taken.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so he was caught stealing.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so he's taken back to the priest and.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And the gendarme, the police officer says, we caught him with all this stuff.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And he says, you gave it to him.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And in this tremendously powerful moment, the priest looks at the police officer and says, yes, I did.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And you left something behind, which was another valuable pair of candlesticks.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so the priest then says that with this silver I am purchasing your soul for God and go on your way.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And essentially Valjean does and makes a life for himself and uses the.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Obviously uses the precious metals to get set up in a factory and becomes the mayor of the city.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And there's lots of twists and turns, but all during this time, there is a particular inspector, police inspector, that is hunting him down by the name of Javert.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And after the priest consecrates him to God with what he steals, and it's a very obvious act of grace, Valjean struggles with the grace that's been offered him.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And he debates about fleeing into anonymity and starting over again and dealing with a life that dealt with him so unfairly.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so eventually he leaves and becomes a mayor and eventually adopts a little girl as his own.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And her mom has gotten sick and eventually dies.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so this inspector tracks him the entire movie, and eventually the girl falls in love with a guy who is part of the French Revolution, which started with students.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so they have a barricade, and as the story goes, he's a part of that group, and they're getting fired upon.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And Joubert, the police inspector, disguises himself as one of them so he can get inside information about what's going on there and to undermine what they're attempting to do.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And Valjean, if you can follow this, Valjean goes to save his.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:His daughter's love interest from utter extinction because they are so outclassed and outgunned by the French army.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so he goes to try to save him.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And who does he meet but Joubert?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And Javert is taken into custody because he's revealed as a spy.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And the leader of the group, a student group, gives him to Valjean.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So he catches him and he cuts him free with a knife.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And, you know, Javert says, how ironic that you would kill me with a knife and I'm not going to, you know, give you all the blow by below details here.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It's not worth that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But he catches his enemy and he ends up actually giving to him what the priest gave to Valjean.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And Javert has no idea.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:He has law and order, justice all the way.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And he says something that caught my attention as I was listening to it, because he says, you will always be what you have always been.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Once a thief, always a thief.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that is the voice of shame.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And then you have, on the other hand, Valjean, who says back to him, look, there is nothing I desire.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:No bargains, no petitions.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:You are free.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that is the voice of grace.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so we have this struggle between these two things, and ultimately, in some respects, that struggle goes on within us.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so the thing I want to try to characterize is two things about any one person's relationship with others within the context of what I'm calling the outpost.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And listen, I am not a theologian.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Neither am I a son of a theologian.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I am none of those things.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I've done enough study, and I have seen it in context and in context of relationships to have some good idea of this.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But I am not gonna try to address this question theologically.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But what I wanna focus on is the grace that's needed to live life differently.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And ultimately, what the Bible refers to that as is sanctification.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And the thing I want to nail down as we move into this is that grace is the beginning of our healing because it offers us the one thing we need the most to be accepted without regard to whether we are acceptable.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I'll say it again, to be accepted without regard to whether we are acceptable.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:One is the act of the one offering it to us to be accepted and without regard to whether we are acceptable, which is usually our assessment of how much we deserve or don't deserve it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So ultimately, what grace ends up doing for us is it creates a space for us to exercise and choose freedom instead of enslavement.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And we'll talk about that more when we get to unpacking shame.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Because shame is all about enslavement.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It's about limiting and constraining and obligating.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But grace creates a space for freedom.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It creates a space to learn a new way of relating and relating to other people and relating to ourselves.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And it also creates a space for us to actually learn more about ourselves, because the more we spend time condemning ourselves, the less time we spend even noticing what's going on within ourselves, because it's all condemned if we do it that way.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So there's some highlights here I want to hit as I try to get into this, and this is probably going to carry me into the next episode, but how do we experience grace?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And I think first and foremost, we experience grace as pardon.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so when we repent to someone else, and I'm not going to say apologize, because I think we have lost the art of repentance, but I think when we experience grace as pardon, which is actually the answer to our guilt, which is true guilt, guilt is when I feel.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:When I feel guilty, when I feel convicted, when I feel motivation to change by the things that I have done, not who I am, but what I've done.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So we experience grace as pardon.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:We experience grace as acceptance, which ultimately, grace is the antidote to shame.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Now, when you read and begin to grasp what Brene Brown has talked about in terms of shame, and it's all good.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:There's very little that I debate about in what she's written.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But shame, the antidote to shame is not just connection.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Ultimately, it is grace and learning to live in grace and being convinced and even trusting that we are loved as we are, not as we should be, because we will never be what we should be.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So we experience grace as acceptance, and that gives us an answer to our shame.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And then a third one is that we experience grace as power, the power to move toward our true self, the one that is anchored in our relationship with others and with God.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so it provides us a power that we would not otherwise have because we actually trust and believe that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Not say what we believe, not say, there's a difference here.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And don't miss that point because we are really good at telling you what we believe.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But then we live some other way, so our belief falls apart.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But we experience grace as gratitude as well.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So not only power, but gratitude.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It gives us a sense of the gift of life, the lavish generosity of people offering us grace, even if they don't know it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But we, you know, Brennan Manning, I had him as a mentor for a period of time.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And he would often say we are living in a go saturated universe.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:If we just opened our eyes, we would see the lavish generosity of God for us and the grace that he offers us for the freedom that comes along with it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:The other thing I want to mention and kind of highlight and underline is that grace and growth are always connected.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:You know, when you think about it, when kids are growing up, they need a lot of grace.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I think without grace, my kids would not have made it out of childhood.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that's not an implicit threat, it is just a statement of fact.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But children grow knowing nothing but love and grace.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:In most cases, there are lots of sad cases that that is not true, and I understand that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But grace encourages growth because human limits are accepted, they are expected.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so there's an understanding that growth comes from adapting to our limits and the mistakes that we make.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so grace creates this environment and a, an environment for growth and shame does not.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And I am making this distinction, but I can't get into a lot of detail with that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But shame is about compliance, not about growth.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so grace allows for what I call crock pot growth, not a microwave product.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that growth is in the nature of who we are and how free we could be if we actually believed we were accepted as we are.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And then last thing I want to mention is just grace in everyday life.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Because grace is intertwined and inevitably tangled with learning.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Because learning allows us space to make mistakes.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:There are always going to be failures in learning, always.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so grace allows the space to make mistakes, to learn from them, and to grow from them.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It encourages taking risks, to try something new even.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And when kids are younger, they do, they do, they Find out and they might make a mistake, right?
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And the funny thing about it is if you look at your mechanical pencil or even just, you know, old school pencil, there's this pink thing on the other end of it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that testifies to our expectation that we are going to make mistakes.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Funny thing is, is that as we write the lines of our lives, we act as if there's no eraser and there can't be an eraser because when a mistake occurs, it is catastrophic, not expected.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so grace in everyday life includes learning.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It also includes forgiveness because it expects human weakness and limits.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It's very much a part of the backdrop to relationships.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Forgiveness is the oil for relationships.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It understands not only that, but it also understands the level of our own forgiveness without shame.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Because the minute I enter shame into it, so somebody says, I forgive you.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And I make the conclusion, I am such an awful person that I don't deserve that forgiveness.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And I have effectively insulated myself from what is being offered me in the grace offered in forgiveness.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so grace and forgiveness, it realizes that grace is giving away what we couldn't afford to others who can't possibly repay their offense.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that's really what it's all about.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Henri Nouwen, the.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:The very well known, he's written, he wrote a number of books.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Henry was trained as a psychologist, but he was a Catholic priest.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And he defined forgiveness as love practiced among people who love poorly.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that truly is part of the backdrop to our lives.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So we may aspire to grace, but we end up still in shame because there's so much undefined and there's so much that requires trust that we don't know.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so the other part of this that is kind of a shadow that you don't necessarily see is the whole idea of grace and self acceptance.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And ultimately it accepts the gift that is given us freely and accepts it with gratitude.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Which takes us back to what I was talking about before.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And ultimately, when I allow for such acceptance, self acceptance, it cultivates humility and my sense of need.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And I'm not saying neediness, I'm just saying need.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And I'm reminded of it every day, all the time.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:There are lots of things I don't pay any attention to, and yet it is pointing to my sense of need.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So grace and self acceptance is very much a part of that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And then the last item that I'll mention is what I call the grace and the well, because Proverbs talks about our heart being a wellspring of life, of the well.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And we are called to care for it and cultivate it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And out of that, Jesus says, a good man brings good things out of the good treasure of his heart.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And the evil man does what is there as well.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So there's a lot that goes into our understanding of grace.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And because we understand it so superficially, we reduce it to something that it's not.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And it's usually a cheap substitute for a contractual relationship with people that I do it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:If I do it, you will do it too.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And if you don't do it, then you're being ungracious.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But I don't know how to be gracious with myself.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So I end up looking to people, to giving me what I have never really figured out, how to accept myself.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that puts people in a pretty awkward spot, if you really want to know about it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So grace is an important, fundamental concept of our faith, and we seem to know so little about it, particularly in our internal world.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And you can say, well, that really doesn't matter that much.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:After all, it's what I do for others.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It really matters.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And the well will run out.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:If all my focus is entirely on everything external to me, that well will run dry and it won't be really a well at all.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It'll be more like a ditch.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Water flows in and water flows out.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I want to cultivate a reservoir, a reservoir out of which the overflow actually flows into people's lives and enriches and graces and encourages them as a result of that overflow.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But I have to care for the boundaries of that reservoir.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So this is the first installment.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I want to spend a little time talking about grace in the next episode.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:There's a lot more to talk about in terms of that that I think is important to understand because this should characterize the relationships within the outpost.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Our tendency is to reduce grace down to, oh, that's okay.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And it isn't.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Grace is an incredibly powerful means by which to encourage and even challenge people to face the consequences of poor choices without deflecting them off on everybody else.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so there's a little bit more that I want to get at, and I will get at it in the next episode.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And until then, thanks for joining me.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:You are.
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Dr. Ray Mitchell:And there are things coming.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I mentioned in the last episode that there are a couple different things that I want to make you aware of on the SGI website.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And we had sent it out in the newsletter as well.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:But the groups, we're trying to get ready to go launch our groups.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And so the way to do that is to go to our groups page on the website.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:There's a dropdown and it says Outpost Groups and there's a QR code there that you can use to fill out a survey or a questionnaire that helps us to understand what the need is or even the interest or the lack of interest, whichever you prefer.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So, so it's there and it will give us an idea of how much we need to, or what we need to do or how to respond to build leaders up and also to create a convergence of people in a particular area so that we can support and resource and encourage along the way through all of that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And that's on the website under groups and fill out the QR code, the questionnaire that comes with it.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And we would happily receive the feedback and get back to you as soon as we possibly can and hopefully be able to birth a few groups that will be anchor places and outposts for us to meet and to show and display some of the things that I'm talking about here.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So you can subscribe on the website, you can follow the podcast on whatever platform you tend to listen to.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:If you're interested, there's digital devotionals on the website that you can take a part of that is about healthy relationships.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:There's a variety of resources that you can take advantage of there.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Of course, you can follow us on three different social media outlets.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:At Instagram, @sgiinternational, on Facebook, Stained Glass International, LinkedIn.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:This is a new one, Stained Glass International there, imagine that.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So follow us on those as well, just to keep up with what's going on.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And if you're interested in partnering with us, we would be ever so grateful for your partnership.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:All gifts, all, all donations, everything is tax deductible.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And we are trying to rebuild our scholarship fund for the silent retreats that will be being developed over the coming months here.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So there's, there's all sorts of things on the website, including my newest book, the Seasons of Our Grief.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:So I think that's it for tonight.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Thanks so much for joining us.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:It's been my pleasure.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:I look forward to seeing you next time.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:And until then, love you later.
Dr. Ray Mitchell:Bye.
