Brennan Manning has written a memoir titled All Is Grace that will be published this year by David C. Cook Publishing. I wrote the Foreword, and include excerpts here about my friend.
I first met Brennan Manning at an event called Greenbelt Festival in England, a sort of Christian Woodstock of artists, musicians and speakers that had attracted twenty thousand fans to tents and impromptu venues set up in the muddy infield of a horse-racing track. Brennan seemed dazzled by the spectacle, and like a color commentator kept trying to explain the subtleties of evangelicalism to his wife Roslyn, a cradle Catholic who lacked Brennan’s experience with the subculture.
We did not see each other often over the years, but each time our paths crossed we went deeper, rather than tilling the same ground of friendship. When he visited a monastery in Colorado for spiritual retreats, he would sometimes get a temporary dispensation from the rule of silence and meet my wife and me at an ice cream parlor (one addiction he doesn’t disclose in these pages). Our backgrounds could hardly have been more different— Southern fundamentalism vs. Northeastern Catholic—and yet by different routes we had both stumbled upon an Artesian well of grace and have been gulping it ever since. One glorious fall afternoon we hiked on a carpet of golden Aspen leaves along a mountain stream and I heard the details of Brennan’s life: his loveless childhood, his marathon search for God, his marriage and divorce, his lies and coverups, his continuing struggles with alcohol addiction.
As you read this memoir you may be tempted, as I am, to think “Oh, what might have been…if Brennan hadn’t given into 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. 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. (John Bunyan, after all, titled his own spiritual biography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners).
At one point Brennan likens himself to Samson, that flawed superman whom God somehow found a way to use right up to the day of his death. Reading such stories in the Old Testament, I’ve come up with a simple principle to explain how God can use the likes of such imperfect men and women: “God uses the talent pool available.” Again and again, Brennan made himself available. In the last few years, nearly blind, subject to illness and falls, at an age when he should have been enjoying retirement on a beach in Florida, he kept getting on airplanes and flying places to proclaim a Gospel he believed with all his heart but could not always live.
“All is grace,” Brennan concludes, looking back on a rich but stained life. He has placed his trust in that foundational truth of the universe, which he has proclaimed faithfully and eloquently.
As a writer, I live in daily awareness of how much easier it is to edit a book than edit a life. When I write about what I believe and how I should live, it sounds neat and orderly. When I try to live it out, all hell breaks loose. Reading Brennan’s memoir, I see something of the reverse pattern. By focusing on the flaws, he leaves out many of the triumphs. I keep wanting him to tell the stories that put him in a good light, and there are many. Choosing full disclosure over a narrative that might burnish his reputation, Brennan presents himself as the Apostle Paul once did, as a “clay jar,” a disposable container made of baked dirt. We must look to his other books for a full picture of the treasure that lay inside.
A poem by Leonard Cohen says it well:
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
Oh! I am so jealous that you knew Brennan. I’ve only just discovered his works … as I’m sure God knew that I needed them now. What a gift that you knew him in person. I’m so sad to have missed him on this side.
“A bell is not a bell until you ring it, a song is not a song until you sing it. Love wasn’t put in your heart to stay, love isn’t love until you give it away.”
You (Amazing Grace) and Brennan (The Ragamuffin Gospel; and his talk at Farnham Castle, 1999) made God’s love a reality in my life and released me from my prison of worthless shame and life crippling guilt for not loving before it was too late.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I love you both in Christ
Antony
Just thinking of one of Brennan’s summary statements, that “God loves you as you are, not as you should be, because we’re never as we should be,” still stops me in my tracks. What a life-jarring, journey-changing, amazing thought. I don’t care to know where I would be if not for the honest, soft, embracing voices of Philip Yancey and Brennan Manning in my life.
So… here we are Feb 24 2020. It’s been 18 days past a year my husband of 30 years died of an overdose. We had 2 beautiful boys and my husband was sober for 11 years but dry. He professed to love Jesus but it never seemed like he thought about Him much. We went to church every Sunday with our kids. I had read Brennen’s books then and asked my husband to read them, he had said that Brennen didn’t live a sober lifestyle so he didn’t give his hypocrisy much clout. If I didn’t take hold of Gods Grace – I really don’t know what would’ve happened to me. When my oldest started drinking at 14 and experimenting, my husband had started drinking again because his job was closing down. Then the doctors put him on anxiety pills and he was hooked on those for a couple of years and eventually went to crack and the last 19 years were hell. He had more mercy and grace shown to him from everyone he knew- God had reached for him for years. Because everything was centered around him- how he was feeling, how he was or wasn’t doing- the disappointment when he relapsed but the hope of sobriety when he was sober- he couldn’t deal with our older son’s use and would come against me when I would discipline him for drinking – my younger son watched- until he picked up. They both are alcoholics, always loved their dad- hated me for a long time and thought I should just leave so they could live with the lifestyle their dad couldn’t beat. I fought through those years with the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ and was left with my life. Eventually they grew up- loved their dad, knew I wasn’t the one lying and was considered the one to hold our family together. My husband just kept reaching back for the alcohol, then cocaine- crack, gambling, escorts. He went to many rehabs. He told me he loved Jesus and when I asked how he could take communion on Sundays, he said he always asked for Gods forgiveness. At the end of his life- even though he truly seemed to hate his addiction, he also had a great love/ lust for it. I often wondered if God cared about me and all the pain my husband caused me. He shattered my life and hurt both our boys terribly by his hypocrisy — there was so much deceit in his life, yet he really meant it when he said he loved Jesus. I have no doubt about Gods character. He will save anyone who wants to be saved. The apostle John speaks about people who have gone out from us and that meant they were never really with us. God says that “godly sorrow leads to repentance”. He says that many will come and say Lord,Lord and Jesus will say He never knew them. He warns us that whoever lives like this will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. I hope my husband is in heaven— reasonably thinking- I don’t know if he really wants to be there because all that he lived for and loved on earth isn’t there. All the people The Lord surrounded him with he deceived so he could also have that whole other life. Jesus said that we couldn’t serve both ways. God be true or every man a liar. Jesus came to save His people from their sin”. What happens to all those lives our sin rips through and leads them to think it’s all good cause God gives us grace to endure it? I was left with my life. Broken, worthless, beat up, used. My family destroyed. My oldest son just turned 30 and just left his 12 th rehab, he can’t stay sober more then 6 weeks, he can’t hold down a job, I had to have him evicted last summer- he’s homeless. My younger son has been sober for 5 months, the same amount of time he had before his dad died. The Lord is the judge. There is His grace and mercy and there is His justice and Truth. It’s too bad along side Brennens writings – his ex wife never wrote her own experience with The Lord regarding what Brennens drinking did to her and her daughters life and how Jesus cared for them. His grace is enough for all of us, it is still “life for a life” – our sacrifice of giving over our sins to Him, our life, for His. To be born again – asking Him to come inside our hearts and to wash us clean— not so we can look good until we go out again. Johns gospel says that Jesus knew what was in mans heart and He wouldn’t entrust Himself to them. I pray that Jesus can trust His heart with me. Brennen spoke many truths about Gods character. I forgive my husband for all he’s done but I can’t be reconciled to him, not only because he died; but because when he was living— he wouldn’t stop sinning and even with all of my years spent on him, all those years of grace that ended up being received by each piece I became- he believed Jesus would take care of him as he went on sinning. – I’m sorry Brennen never dwelt on repentance and what that really meant. For the love of Christ- Tamara