A Theology of Awkwardness

Letters From Austria: Week 4

And just like that, it’s over. I spent months and months planning the course I taught here—years really, ever since my friend Matt Breuninger first raised the possibility of me teaching it way, way back in December 2020. And as of a few short minutes ago, my last lecture has been delivered, my final advice imparted, and a standing invitation to all my students to visit my family issued.

I will miss this place desperately when we leave tomorrow morning, but I will miss my students even more. I have found that the people are always the best part of any good thing. They are what make a thing good. And this class has been no exception. Over the course of three weeks, we talked, laughed, cooked, and cleaned together. We read beautiful books and essays together. We pondered Word and Sacrament, mountains and risottos, and all the gorgeous, creative, fragile awkwardness of the human person together. And now we’re all off to wherever life is taking us next, hoping we can hold on to the best of what we experienced.

For me, that best is the memory of my students and all the other wonderful people we met here. It’s also the conviction that there is no greater tragedy for the human person than trying to escape the world as God made it.

No matter what the Silicon Valley Oligarchs will tell you, there is no substitute for reality. There is no such thing as virtual matter or virtual grace, virtual love or virtual holiness. There are no virtual sacraments. There is no virtual salvation. There is only one version of all those things, and there is nothing virtual about it. God was born in the flesh and lived in the flesh. He loved in the flesh and died in the flesh. He then rose to new life in the flesh. And that’s the only way for us to live, love, and rise, too—in these fragile, fleshy, uncooperative, bodies, enmeshed in the stories and lives of other equally fragile, fleshy, and uncooperative persons.

As I’ve spent the past three weeks telling my students, food and hospitality remind us of that truth, grounding us in the splendor of creation, the neediness of the human person, and the power of community. To feed others and to welcome others is both call and gift, command and blessing. And when we lose sight of that, we lose sight of who we are: creatures, made in the image of God. We also lose sight of how wildly preposterous God’s love and death for us is.

I ended today’s lecture by talking about awkwardness. My husband frequently jokes that he wants to write a book called “The Theology of Awkwardness.” But I may try to beat him to it. For awkwardness matters more than most of us realize. It is what so many of us spend our whole lives running from. We are terrified of saying and doing the wrong thing, coming off the fool, finding ourselves humiliated through our own inadequacy, and not measuring up. Awkwardness is also what makes so many forms of technology—artificial and otherwise—so appealing. It promises us protection from awkwardness—from uncomfortable conversations, badly written emails, poor decisions about paint colors, encounters that don’t go as planned, disappointment in friendship, rejection in love, and so many of the messy moments in romance, work, and life that expose us for the imperfect beings we are.

But, if we let them, those messy moments can become the making of us. Awkward encounters unmask us, revealing our pretensions, limitations, and affectations. In that, they offer us the chance not only to grow in humility, but to laugh at ourselves—to stop taking ourselves and our anxieties so danged seriously and just get on with the business of living. They also remind us to extend grace to others who are struggling along just as we are. And of course (says the Irish in me), all our awkward scrapes teach us that what doesn’t kill us will only make us stronger … and leave us with a really good story. Which is not unimportant. You can’t have an interesting life without awkward messy moments. Consider: Who among us has ever aspired to be a boring literary heroine, whose days are perpetually free from scrapes and adventures? No one, that’s who. At least no one of any sense. I’ve met a thousand girls who dreamed of being Anne Shirley, but not a one who wanted to be Fanny Price (unless we’re talking about the Fanny Price from the 1999 movie version; she was splendid!).

Life’s awkward moments can do something even more important than make us interesting, though. They can make us grateful. They can fill us with gratitude and wonder at the marvel of a God who died for such a bumbling lot of fools as us. We humans are creatures capable of great good and great evil. But we’re also creatures capable of great silliness—of letting our fears, insecurities, and ignorance lead us down the most ridiculous of paths. Along those paths, we say the wrong things, do the wrong things, and worry about the wrong things. Yet God still loves us. And He still went to the cross for us. Again, it is a marvel, and one we don’t wonder at nearly enough.

Which brings me back to my last lecture.

Extending hospitality to others matters for all sorts of reasons. It draws people together, shows people they matter, and builds community. But it also creates endless opportunities for awkwardness. We cannot escape our own ridiculousness when we’re flinging open the doors of our homes and inviting people in to the reality of our lives—lives with laundry piled high, furniture that has seen better days, and children with mildly insane minds of their own. We also can’t escape our humanity when the people we’re inviting in have desires, habits, tastes, and thoughts so unlike our own.

True hospitality—not the Martha Stewart variety of entertaining, but the casual, regular, welcoming of friends and strangers—demands we make ourselves vulnerable: vulnerable to rejection, vulnerable to judgement, and vulnerable to awkwardness. You can’t casually welcome people in on the regular and not risk having your struggles and weaknesses eventually exposed. Sooner or later, you will do or say the wrong thing. So will your guests. Awkward moments are inevitable. Which is, of course, why so many people don’t want to do it. We don’t want to be exposed for the blessed fools that we are. But that’s also one of the reasons why we so desperately need to do it.

In an age that promises us shelter from the truth of our humanity, we need to seek out every opportunity we can for seeing ourselves and others as we really are. For if we don’t do that, we’ll never see God for who He really is either. And there is no greater tragedy in life than that.

I’ll have more to write about this, as well as my class and all our adventures here later. But right now, I need to get to packing. My family and I are off to England very early Saturday morning, where I’m looking forward to long rambles through Oxford, Devon, and Cornwall, uninterrupted conversations about faith, writing, and mothering with two dear and brilliant women, and the one thing I have not had for the past many,many weeks: rest.

I’ll have a little something for you next week, but until then, your prayers for a safe and relatively boring travel day are appreciated!

Oh, and for those of you who have been following a long with what we’ve been reading, watching, and cooking in class, here you go: