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.
I have been looking forward to reading Mr. Manning’s memoirs. In recent months however, I have come across varying views of Mr. Manning’s theology. There are some in fact that consider him to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. How awful.
These commentators are comparing Brennan’s religious views to that of eastern mystics…that he (Brennan) is watering down the gospel and pumping up man; that all of mankind can “feel” God’s love if he/she meditates on nothingness..and just listens for God’s voice.
I’m confused actually. I have read many of his books and enjoyed them…. but I agree there is something missing, something very important…Manning doesn’t mention the total depravity of man in light of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s perfect holiness. Yes, God is Love, but God is also Just. Christ left his eternal home to glorify God, willingly die on the cross for the propitiation of man’s sin culminating with eternal life for those whom He died.
Appreciate any insights. Perhaps I missed the boat.
Warm regards in Christ,
Bob
It is only because of Grace and the revelation shared through Brennon Manning that I am living in freedom one day at a time. I found Jesus in his books. And today I can say that I am a real ‘Christian’. It is not what I do but what has been done and GIVEN to me that equips me to live a life of freedom. I do not judge. I love. It is the Master (Jesus) who makes the difference. And He loves each and every broken sinful one of us.
He was my friend, too, Mr. Yancey. I miss him, deeply. He came to my family’s retreat center in NC from the time I was a child, and I was so grateful for his friendship into adulthood. He was a priest to my family, and to me personally.
What you said is true…what if he hadn’t been discovered grace? I’m baffled, but mostly saddened, by -and for- his critics. It doesn’t hurt my feelings for Brennan, I’m not sure I ever saw him too concerned about what others thought about him, not in a real sense. But it makes my heart ache for humanity, not that they didn’t know Brennan…though, my goodness, I wish everyone could have known him…in person, too, to hear him speak how he reads, and not just what they think they know about him…those who suggest he was arrogant and took liberties, my gosh…I wish I could introduce them to one another. But it makes me ache that Abba’s grace as Brennan profoundly and painstakingly understood is not what every believer understands to be true. There are many who do, though, and I thank God for it. I’ve never known a truer grace of Jesus, or the truth of Jesus, but by knowing Brennan. And I would not want to know another Jesus than the Jesus of the grace journey that I continue to learn from Brennan. My life could never be turned around by anything other than this grace.
My own healing journey of brokenness and grace has led me to seminary as a “non-traditional” student, working part-time on an MDiv and a Counseling degree while I work full-time with college students. I’m working on a paper tonight for one of my Counseling classes, about my own Theology of Counseling. In it, I am remembering how I learned of the relentless, awful grace of the Father through my friend Brennan. May this always be my compass.
An aside: As I will be finishing up my MDiv next summer, I’ve asked one of my professors if he would be willing for me to take his Biblical Doctrine of Grace course independently. Your text is one of our sources. I’m not sure why I haven’t read it in life yet, but look forward to reading it over the holidays.
P.S. I used to pick him up at the airport and we would ride out to our local creamery together, and it was as if that time together was the only reason he got on a plane. Man, I miss him.
Thank you for sharing about your friendship with him. It is clear he appreciated his friendship with you, and admired you as a minister.
I love it–for Brennan, ice cream was prove of God’s grace. And he ingested it every chance he got. I’m glad you have the message, to impart to college students. –Philip
Thank you for this great perspective on the book. And maybe the biggest message any of us takes away from Brennan is that we are ALL broken–some just aren’t yet aware of it. Someone once told me that we begin to realize what our relationship to Christ is all about when the wheels fall off of our bus–that’s when we realize that ALL we have is Jesus, and He is enough. So thankful that Brennan understood this and never let his failures stop him from sharing this.