The other day an old favorite of mine came up on my playlist. It was a Joan Baez song, written by the legendary folk singer Phil Ohcs, There But For Fortune. Perhaps you remember it. The lyrics begin with this stanza:
Show me an alley, show me a train
Show me a hobo who sleeps out in the rain
And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why
There but for fortune go you or go I
In a plaintive voice, Baez recounts the story of other mis-fortunates, a prisoner, a drunk, and, finally, a country devastated by war; ending each example with the refrain there but for fortune go you or go I.
It is, of course, a modern reframing of the expression There but for the Grace of God. I had not thought about that substitution before but it caught my attention this time and not in a good way. You see, fortune and the grace of God are not the same and that's what bothered me. I understand what Ohcs was saying, any of us could find ourselves in similar straits by some twist of fate, but good fortune was with us, so we should take pity on those who were not so fortunate. Except, good or bad fortune is about luck, about capricious happenstance, while Grace is something entirely different.
Whether you believe in God, a higher power, the Universe or none of these, Grace stands apart--a blessing undeserved, in fact a blessing we can never earn by our own actions. The nature of Grace is that it is always given freely, there are no strings attached. So, when we say there but for God's grace we are acknowledging both our own errors and the loving correction we have been given that kept us from paying its price.
It is an expression of humility, one that acknowledges the limitations of our agency. We are no better than any other, we have only been spared the consequences of our mis direction. And this is the bright line that separates fortune and grace for me. Now I suppose if one does not believe in an ordered world of any kind this distinction might not be relevant. But to steal a line from Albert Einstein, "God does not play dice with the Universe". Einstein was referring to the laws of probability which he believed and sought to prove were not random.
I think you'll find that even those who do not subscribe to the existence of God, or perhaps hold to the intelligent watchmaker perspective, nevertheless do believe in an ordered universe. If everything is random than nothing can be relied upon, and all laws physical and otherwise may cease at any time. But that is not how we live our lives. Quite to the contrary, we expect gravity to work even though we cannot entirely explain it, and the same goes for countless other things we take for granted every day. Not everyone may believe there is a plan for their lives but few believe there is no plan behind existence.
And that is the intersection we stand at when we express our gratitude for the undeserved gift that spares us from a bad decision, a mortal sin, a wrong path taken. Because we know or we should if we have lived even a few decades that we will err, make bad decisions from time to time, perhaps worse. We are human, and to be human is to be capable of mistake. The question is not will we do so but when and how often. Which brings us to the final distinction. Fortune smiles some days but seldom forever, while Grace is abundant and it is with us always.
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