Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

by Kate Bowler

Fairness is one of the most compelling claims of the American Dream, a vision of success propelled by hard work, determination, and maybe the occasional pair of bootstraps.

Spiritual laws offer an elegant solution to the problem of unfairness. They create a Newtonian universe in which the chaos of the world seems reducible to simple cause and effect. The stories of people’s lives can be plotted by whether or not they follow the rules. In this world there is no such thing as undeserved pain. There is no word for tragedy.

I am, unfortunately, amazing at being miserable.”

Live without forevers that don’t always come.

The promise of heaven to me is this: someday I will get a new set of lungs and I will swim away. But first I will drown.

“LIFE IS A SERIES OF LOSSES,”

I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future. The world cannot be remade by the sheer force of love. A brutal world demands capitulation to what seems impossible—separation. Brokenness. An end without an ending.

Control is a drug, and we are all hooked, whether or not we believe in the prosperity gospel’s assurance that we can master the future with our words and attitudes.

“We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can—namely, surrender our will and fulfill God’s will in us.”

inchoate

There is a trite cruelty in the logic of the perfectly certain.

when I was sure I was going to die, I didn’t feel angry. I felt loved.

There is no life in general.

Catholics, of all God’s children, are wonderful at being sad.

Sometimes this ability to live in the moment feels like a gift. My pain feels connected to the pain of others somehow.

If I were to invent a sin to describe what that was—for how I lived—I would not say it was simply that I didn’t stop to smell the roses. It was the sin of arrogance, of becoming impervious to life itself. I failed to love what was present and decided to love what was possible instead. I must learn to live in ordinary time, but I don’t know how.

he did it without knowing it would matter. He marched forward because it was the best he could do.

“Don’t skip to the end,” he said, gently. “Don’t skip to the end.”

will die, yes, but not today.

When someone is drowning, the only thing worse than failing to throw them a life preserver is handing them a reason.