On Brennan and this Ragamuffin's Gospel

Brennan Manning, it seemed, was a friend of mine. Oh, we never met, but through his writing I sort of feel even closer than a kindred spirit. His face looked like weathered rock, with crevices that wouldn't hold a piton. He looked old when he was young and I think he got older quicker than most of us. His path was not a simple one, nor was it gentle and soft.

That he has passed is just another of the many signs of my aging, I'm afraid.

Donald Miller said of him: "Manning wrestled with God as much as he walked with God. He seemed like the kind of man who would constantly tug at God’s shirt tails and ask, for the thousandth time, is it true? only to run into the village and explain to the rest of us that it was. Then to return, tug on God’s shirt tail and ask again, is it true?

"Manning’s ability to stir the imagination of singers, songwriters, playwrights and poets was fierce. Many books, albums, bands and films exist because Brennan Manning convinced the artist of the safety of grace. He was a pivotal voice for me as I began to write. We got together more than a few times. He could be warm and open for one meeting, then cold and crotchety for the next. He taught me I could be the same, that I could be myself."

Upon learning that Manning's home base was New Orleans, I wrote to him once, enclosing my first book "One Man, One Cross." I'm not sure what I wanted from that, but I got this:

He sent a short critique of the book, plus one of his own, a soon-to-be published Ruthless Trust: A Ragamuffin's Path to the End." Inside, he wrote in a terrible but real hand:

 New Orleans

8 November 2000

Billy,

I thoroughly enjoyed your book. Thank you

Grace and Peace

Brennan Manning

 

I learned of Manning, of course, through my listening to and reading about Rich Mullins, whose music kept me in the fold when I was in doubt after the Good Shepherd had found the lost one. Mullins, I read back, way back, named his band The Ragamuffins after some writer name Manning's book "The Ragamuffin Gospel."

 

I bought it. I read it, quick like there was little time left, like Jesus was coming and I needed to get this in. I read it again, going deeper in ways I didn't know I had deep and perhaps again. I loaned it to a fellow straggler on the narrow path. She never gave it back.

 

When I heard that Brennan had died on Friday, I bought another for my Nook. All my being fixed, all  my thinking way too much of my holiness was wiped away, like foggy breath on the inside of a car's windshield. I read, I looked backward, I learned all over again who I truly am. It is a lesson none of us needs to forget, like who is the savior and who is the saved.

 

I read this: "After reading the entire Gospel of Luke for the first time, a post-Valley girl said: 'Wow! Like Jesus has this totally intense thing for ragamuffins.' The young lady is onto something. Jesus spent a disproportionate amount of time with people described in the Gospels as the poor, the blind, the lame, the lepers, the hungry, sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, the persecuted, the down trodden, the captives, those possessed by unclean spirits, all who labor and are heavy burdened, the rabble who know nothing of the law, the crowds, the little ones, the least, the last, and the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

 

Baboom. When I read it the first time, I realized I was in there. Bigger than life. I had cleaned my filthy self up, but I was in there. I had reached by to my Holiness roots, felt myself to be a "church-goer" again, but what I was in actuality was a ragamuffin extremely lucky to have met the Lord of Life.

 

To paraphrase still another writer I used to read who isn't with us now:

 

Rich is gone. Brennan is gone. And I ain't feeling so great myself.