All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir

by Brennan Manning

As you read this memoir, you may be tempted, as I was, to think, Oh, what might have been … if Brennan hadn’t given in to drink. I urge you to reframe the thought to, Oh, what might have been … if Brennan hadn’t discovered grace. More than once I have watched this leprechaun of an Irish-Catholic hold spellbound an audience of thousands by telling in a new and personal way the story that all of us want to hear: that the Maker of all things loves and forgives us. Brennan knows well that love and especially the forgiveness. He may have left the platform that very night for a hotel room and drunk himself senseless. He admits in these pages to having broken all Ten Commandments several times over (murder, Brennan?). Each time he begged for forgiveness, repented to God and to his friends, and got up off the floor to keep walking. Like Christian, the everyman character in The Pilgrim’s Progress, he progressed not by always making right decisions but by responding appropriately to wrong ones.

I began to see that Brennan’s hellish journey of two steps forward, three steps back kept him so entrenched in a prodigal story that he knew over and over and over and over again the outlandish grace of the Father welcoming him home. I, too, have struggled with addiction, and so Brennan’s story helps make sense of my own; but even if you don’t have an addiction, I know you struggle with something again and again and again. In most testimonies the good news is only a small part of the story, obscured by our achieving and overcoming. In Brennan’s story, and in mine, the good news is the entire story, which blessedly leaves us with nothing to prove or protect.

in the end, my sin will never outweigh God’s love. That the Prodigal can never outrun the Father. That I am not measured by the good I do but by the grace I accept. That being lost is a prerequisite to being found. That living a life of faith is not lived in the light, it is discovered in the dark. That not being a saint here on earth will not necessarily keep you from being in that number when the march begins.

Ragamuffins have a singular prayer: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

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.

I may be reading too strongly, and acknowledge that he qualifies this sentiment with the past tense (Catholicism, it seems, is often the branch of the faith most prone to smothering legalism and preaching nothing but fire and brimstone; it is my understanding that this was an especially large problem at the moment in history he describes), but this is where the balance tipping in favor of feelings and love compromises the truth of the gospel. theology is how we study and know of God, and there are few theological issues that are truly reducible to mere “rhetoric.” Christ’s exhortations to “personal renewal” and “fidelity to the Gospel” presume a right relationship with God, and one cannot truly be in relationship with Him if you don’t really know who He is, and you don’t have a prayer of being faithful to the Gospel if you don’t understand it—even the inconvenient parts.

Although I have always given the appearance of speaking openly about my alcoholism, rest assured it has always been only what I wanted the listener or reader to know, nothing more.

I was never receptive to the tough-love approach, even though I’ve applauded it in print. It’s easy to approve of something when it’s not being done to you.

and it’s easy to apply it from the safety of a keyboard or pen and paper: read his introduction to Michael Card’s book, “A Fragile Stone: The Emotional Life of St. Peter” and note how ruthlessly he excoriates those among the elect who are dishonest about their sins. these were true words, to be sure, but ring with hypocrisy—something Brennan waited until the end of his life, when he had nothing else to lose, to be honest about.

It would be many years later that Roslyn would tell me that in the beginning of our relationship, she had promised herself she would not ask me to choose between her and the priesthood. She kept that promise; she never asked. But seven years is a long time for anyone to live apart from the person he or she loves, playing second fiddle to God. But what could I do? I was a Franciscan priest vowed to the celibate life. Roslyn was a single mother. We were in love.

which is a useful illustration of what this Protestant does not fully understand about Catholicism: the celibacy requirement for its shepherds. the Bible does not impose this requirement, yet Rome strictly enforces it with unblinking zeal. why?

I have learned in my life that grace often gestates, like an unborn child. And when the expectant mother grabs the hospital-prepared suitcase and screams, “Let’s go!” then you’d better go.

bold words for a man who spoke with sarcasm about the Church’s attitude towards abortion.

At our home in New Orleans, we had a swimming pool, an aspect of our home that everyone enjoyed, including me. But an outdoor swimming pool must be cleaned regularly. It’s a chore. One day Roslyn asked me to clean it. I tried, but I did a shoddy job. Roslyn asked me again about it later, and I replied, “No, I won’t do it. It’s disturbing my peace of mind!” Yes, I really said that. I went inside, and Roslyn ended up cleaning the pool. This one event serves as an apt metaphor: Roslyn and I were married for eighteen years, and for most of those, while I was traveling and preaching and writing and cultivating my peace of mind, Roslyn cleaned the pool.

One of the realities of the family of an alcoholic is that they often get sucked into the craziness themselves. No one intends for this to happen, it just does. This happened to Roslyn. At her own admission, at times she was in as much denial as I was; in our own individual ways we strained to hide the truth and keep up appearances. What is there in life that can prepare you to live with an alcoholic?

My “best” game, so to speak, was a nine-day disappearance. No one knew where I was. At the time, Roslyn was doing some post-grad work at Loyola, working toward a master’s degree in religious education. My disappearance was so intense and anxiety-filled for her that she dropped out for that semester. She did complete her degree, seven years later, no doubt because she didn’t have to spend all of her time looking for me.

at the risk of playing armchair psychologist, one of the reasons Brennan leaned in too far on “God loves you as you are and not as you should be” may have been because he decided, long ago, that he would never make a real effort to be as he should be, then blessed it with misguided religiosity, a holy permission slip to live an unholy life. and there but for the grace of God go any of us.

We were married for sixteen years, and then we separated in 1998. After a year, we tried to reunite, but it was obvious that the tissue of our marriage was fatally scarred, the damage was done, and we were both pretty numb. A year later, in 2000, our divorce was final.

watch the video of his speaking at Kingdom Works 1999, and filter his entire message through this knowledge. we all have blind spots, but that doesn’t make them any less deadly—or excusable.

The last few years leading up to our divorce tore my emotions to shreds. I was traveling way too much, isolated and drunk. On the surface it appeared I was doing well. But below the surface loneliness and insecurity churned with a merciless fury. I sincerely don’t know that my speaking was very valuable during those years. People told me the talks were life changing and the books were liberating, but I just don’t know.

Several of my good friends, men of my own kind, confronted me over the years about my lying. It wasn’t so much the lies about the big things as the lies about the little stuff, the need to lie at all. Why does an alcoholic lie about the petty? To stay in practice. Alcoholism isn’t called “the Liar’s Disease” for nothing. Those confrontations never went well. I only wish I could have trusted then what I believe now. There’s not a chance those confrontations ever came from a place of malice; they were always rooted in love. However, I always heard their words as criticism, and as such, I reacted in defensive anger. For me, the anger was simply a mask, a mask for fear. I dimly suspected that then, but I can confess it now.

I was deeply moved years ago when reading Robert Johnson’s memoir Balancing Heaven and Earth. One of the passages I marked heavily with asterisks recounts the contents of a vivid dream Johnson experienced one night. I included that passage in my book Ruthless Trust. I believe these words are now a fitting, living tribute to my good friends. Some have criticized that the passage breaks all rules of orthodoxy. It’s probably helpful to know that one of the rules of the Sinners has always been “There are no rules.” A prosecutor presented all of the sins of commission and omission that I was responsible for throughout my life, and the list was very long indeed. That went on for hours, and it fell on me like a landslide. I was feeling worse and worse to the point where the soles of my feet were hot. After hours of accusations from the prosecution, a group of angels appeared to conduct my defense. All they could say was, “But he loved.” They began chanting this over and over again in a chorus: “But he loved. But he loved. But he loved.” This continued until dawn, and in the end the angels won, and I was safe.3

it’s this flippant treatment of theology and orthodoxy that, unfortunately, robs his ministry of important truth. there are a great many rules, and the most important one is that Jesus died for my sins so I would not die in them—which ought to compel devotion and obedience to His call to take up the cross and follow Him. Brennan did a good job providing the starting point: God loves you as you are, and not as you should be, because none of us are as we should be. the problem is that he stayed there and encouraged everyone else to do the same: don’t focus on your sins, don’t focus on the rules; just be you because God loves you. what could have been a profound call to fellowship and honesty in brokenness became an excuse to stay in the pigsty, gnawing on corn. as for the quote he cites: “but he loved” is a flat-out rejection of Christ’s sacrifice, and very dangerous ground to tread.

I mentioned earlier that a handful of Notorious Sinners confronted me on various occasions for lying. One of those stalwart souls was Paul. In early 2000, he had noticed I’d made some statements that simply were not true. I tried to brush them off as exaggerations, but Paul called them lies. He had also noticed an anger in my preaching that concerned him; his literal words were “It scared me.” My oldest friend shared his concerns with me. Some might immediately pull out the phrase “tough love,” but remembering that time now, his were nothing short of tender, heartfelt words. But an alcoholic’s best defense is to get defensive, and so I did.

Rob eventually became a cop and I became a priest. My father often said, “I have one son to keep me outta jail and one son to keep me outta hell.”

I have said countless times that losing our illusions is difficult because illusions are the stuff we live by. We believe we’re invincible until cancer comes knocking, or we believe we’re making a comeback until we tumble down the stairs. God strips away those falsehoods because it is better to live naked in truth than clothed in fantasy. The last few years have been a “stripping away” like I’ve never experienced. About all I’m left with now is rags, somewhat fitting I guess for a man who has preached such a gospel. If I ever was a ragamuffin, I am now. For ragamuffins, God’s name is Mercy; or in the present vernacular of my life—Help.

the Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon. He calls it vulgar grace. In Jesus, God has put up a “Gone Fishing” sign on the religion shop. He has done the whole job in Jesus once and for all and simply invited us to believe it—to trust the bizarre, unprovable proposition that in him, every last person on earth is already home free without a single religious exertion: no fasting till your knees fold, no prayers you have to get right or else, no standing on your head with your right thumb in your left ear and reciting the correct creed—no nothing.… The entire show has been set to rights in the Mystery of Christ—even though nobody can see a single improvement. Yes, it’s crazy. And yes, it’s wild, and outrageous, and vulgar. And any God who would do such a thing is a God who has no taste. And worst of all, it doesn’t sell worth beans. But it is Good News—the only permanently good news there is—and therefore I find it absolutely captivating.1 (italics mine)

my first instinct is to reject what I see as the obvious error: if you accept Christ but never change, did you really? then I examine my own behavior of the last forty-eight hours and wonder if I’m the one in the wrong here.

while Brennan preached and taught of God’s furious longing for us and the joy that comes from the Abba experience, that message often seemed elusive to his own grasp. I have no doubt there were bright mornings and luminous afternoons for Brennan, but there have also been many, many dark nights. I suppose the preacher always preaches the message he needs most.

grace cannot be weakened by anything a human being does or disbelieves. It runs on, a pure thing, in spite of, as well as because of, us.