Metal ’25: Dignity and Grace

This is the fifth excerpt from the first free hour of my Metal ’25 retreat. You can find the previous installment here. May your autumn be gracefully honed.

Thank you for using that word, yes. That is the result. That is one of the shimmers that one sees from the metal element of a person who has bowed to a higher law, who has surrendered to majesty and stood back up again because we have a spine, dignity. Yeah, exactly.

I believe that in the longest of long runs, you’re right. I also believe that it is helpful  to make a distinction between health and holiness. I’m defining holiness as place where you end up if you aim for Mount health and then keep walking. However, health is good enough for many practitioners. For healthy dignity, there does need to be love in the mix somewhere. It may just be self-love. It may not be a sense that, for instance, the random shooting of black men by the police is coming ultimately from love. We may not be in a place of being able to say anything about the higher purpose of that!  

But there is a dignity in being a black man who is bowing to the fact that this is happening, and that it is dangerous. Bowing to it, I acknowledge it. It is what it is. It is this way; I’m bowing. I’m acknowledging it, the way that a diver acknowledges gravity, and then within that context, I am responding with my freedom. I am doing my life and living my values within a context that I did not choose and cannot control. Gravity is carrying me this way. I’m flying through the air, and I’m doing it this way.  

It’s a very different freedom than the freedom of Wood. I did not choose any of this. I acknowledge it, and by acknowledging it, I can find dignity and grace. Nobody is graceful when they are not acknowledging reality. It just doesn’t work out. Nobody is dignified unless they also have their own backbone and their own value system, even within what they did not choose: I’m not going to be crushed; I’m not going to be cowed; I’m not going to be humiliated; I’m going to be prudent, and I’m going to walk like this.

I’m reminded also of some situations with elders, and what it feels like to need to have someone else wipe your ass. There is the simultaneous recognition, “This is how it is. I do need to bow to that. And, I don’t like it.” That’s what my value system says. “This sucks. I don’t like it. My larger apprehension of the Will of Heaven is that I am in these circumstances. It’s bigger than I am. I bow to the need to have someone else wipe my ass if I’m not going to keep sitting in my own shit.”

Dignity comes in because I am still taking the freedom I have, to live my values and to straighten back up again after the bow. Grace comes from that acknowledgement: It is the way it is. I can’t go against what is. All my freedom is going to be within is-ness. We are working with the freedom we do have, to maintain our values in the face of what’s happening, and not be afraid that we must be mentally ill if we think that something sucks, nor stiffly like “I’m right and God’s wrong,” but also not collapsed and jellyfish like God’s right and I’m wrong. We are in the middle of a reckoning process here, bowing and straightening up again, finding our dignity, grace and freedom within circumstances.

In what ways are you able to hold onto dignity and grace in circumstances not of your choosing? What is your reckoning process like, when your value system and the Will of Heaven are clearly different?