This is The Nooner, a (very short) daily newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
To see the first post, which doubles as an explainer, click here.
Also a quick reminder that you can listen to the podcast version of each post wherever you listen to podcasts.
Original Chaos
In response to my recent post about the Golden Rule, a reader asked me if I’d read Adam Miller’s Original Grace. I had to sheepishly admit that practically half my ideas come from that guy.
One of the theories Miller is best known for is that grace is actually everything. It’s an elegant proposition, since it takes only one or two logical steps to get from grace as something freely given, to life as something freely given, to life itself as grace.
All of life.
The so-called good, and the so-called bad. The pain and the pleasure, the sorrow and the joy. The sweet things that melt and the bitter things that cut.
I’ve spent a lot of time with this idea since first encountering it in his work several years ago. One of its potential applications is that we can think of chaos as another word for grace.
Because what is chaos but a plan exploder? And what are plans but our messy little maps of a universe we can barely see? And, finally, what could be more tragic than successfully inching our way through life according to the map, only to find ourselves lost and alone?
This might sound like cynicism, but it’s not.
Wasn’t it true, at least once, that having your best laid plans blown to smithereens was the best thing that ever happened to you?
Couldn’t it then also be true that you’ll be better off in the long run if whatever plans you’re trying to hatch right now get smashed to bits by chaos? And that those plans will seem silly and inconsequential in the light of whatever future grace unfolds along the timeline of your actual life?
Chaos is the catalyst for evolution, which can be painful! But that’s life.
Click at least one of these or else…
…itty bitty little wasps might crawl up your nose and play orchestral music from the late 17th century.
I keep plagiarizing Adam Miller