All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir

by Brennan Manning

My experience has shown me that I all too often tend to deny that which lies behind, but as I still believe, that which is denied cannot be healed.

Ragamuffins have a singular prayer: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Any additional flourishes to make that cry more palatable are pharisaical leaven. Warning: Mine has been anything but a straight shot, more like a crooked path filled with thorns and crows and vodka. Prone to wander? You bet. I’ve been a priest, then an ex-priest. Husband, then ex-husband. Amazed crowds one night and lied to friends the next. Drunk for years, sober for a season, then drunk again. I’ve been John the beloved, Peter the coward, and Thomas the doubter all before the waitress brought the check. I’ve shattered every one of the Ten Commandments six times Tuesday. And if you believe that last sentence was for dramatic effect, it wasn’t.

The fact that my mother made sure I attended a prestigious school might seem to contradict my feelings of unworthiness. But it doesn’t. For the shame-bound family, appearances are everything, and my mother made sure that on the outside we looked respectable, as if we fit in with the Irish-Catholics around us.

I was young and horribly insecure and willing to try anything to not feel that way.

This thought nails me, even as an adult.

You should know, however, that from this point on, you’d be wise to consider anything I say about alcohol to be suspect. It’s not that what I’m saying isn’t true; it’s that what I’m saying only scratches the surface.

Drinking gave me a rush of confidence, and for a boy hounded by feelings of inadequacy, the buzz was a welcome relief.

If some things aren’t said before a boy leaves home, it’s probably too late. I do wish my father might have tried to say something, anything. But I don’t believe he got those kinds of fathering “cards” from his father, and as my mother said, “If you don’t get ’em, you can’t play ’em.”

One of my realizations in such an earthy atmosphere was that many of the burning theological issues in the church were neither burning nor theological. It was not more rhetoric that Jesus demanded but personal renewal, fidelity to the gospel, and creative conduct.

One evening while at prayer, wrapped in those threads, I saw my entire life flash before me. This was not like my pretty dream; it was actually rather ugly. I saw my life as vitiated by pride, by the inordinate desire to be liked, loved, approved, applauded, and accepted. Even though I had done well in my desert classroom, my motives were peeled away to reveal complete self-centered yuck. Can you be a self-centered chicken-coop builder? Can a water carrier be stuck on himself? The answer I heard was a resounding and humbling “Yes!” That old desire to be liked reared its ugly head. I thought maybe I had grown beyond it or out of it, but I hadn’t. I was devastated; everything felt Brennan-centered instead of Christ-focused. I felt like my life was a waste, and it made me physically sick. I stood from my ostensibly pious posture of prayer upon hearing an old voice: He’ll never amount to much.

Is Brennan in my head?

In that moment he said a powerful thing, a life-changing thing: “You are on the threshold of receiving the greatest grace of your life. You are discovering what it means to be poor in spirit. Brother Brennan, it’s okay not to be okay.”

All that is not the love of God has no meaning for me. I can truthfully say that I have no interest in anything but the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. If God wants it to, my life will be useful through my word and witness. If He wants it to, my life will bear fruit through my prayers and sacrifices. But the usefulness of my life is His concern, not mine. It would be indecent of me to worry about that.

Question: “Brennan, how could you relapse into alcoholism after your Abba encounters?” Answer: “These things happen.”

I am, and have always been, more than the sum of my deeds. Thank God.