My Friend Brennan
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.
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About Philip Yancey
For Yancey, reading offered a window to a different world. So, he devoured books that opened his mind, challenged his upbringing, and went against what he had been taught. A sense of betrayal engulfed him.
Listening and reading Brennan Manning for the first time yesterday enhanced this blessed spiritual path that I have been enveloped ow for three years to an extent that is beyond words. Yesterday I spent nearly 5 hours of listening and reading Manning, and will probably do the same today with an understanding and enjoyment that I have never experienced in my life. I cannot wait until I receive the first two books
that I ordered, and will bevoud everything that he has written and said.
So… here we are Feb 24 2020. It’s been 18 days past a year my husband of 30 years died of an overdose. We had 2 beautiful boys and my husband was sober for 11 years but dry. He professed to love Jesus but it never seemed like he thought about Him much. We went to church every Sunday with our kids. I had read Brennen’s books then and asked my husband to read them, he had said that Brennen didn’t live a sober lifestyle so he didn’t give his hypocrisy much clout. If I didn’t take hold of Gods Grace – I really don’t know what would’ve happened to me. When my oldest started drinking at 14 and experimenting, my husband had started drinking again because his job was closing down. Then the doctors put him on anxiety pills and he was hooked on those for a couple of years and eventually went to crack and the last 19 years were hell. He had more mercy and grace shown to him from everyone he knew- God had reached for him for years. Because everything was centered around him- how he was feeling, how he was or wasn’t doing- the disappointment when he relapsed but the hope of sobriety when he was sober- he couldn’t deal with our older son’s use and would come against me when I would discipline him for drinking – my younger son watched- until he picked up. They both are alcoholics, always loved their dad- hated me for a long time and thought I should just leave so they could live with the lifestyle their dad couldn’t beat. I fought through those years with the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ and was left with my life. Eventually they grew up- loved their dad, knew I wasn’t the one lying and was considered the one to hold our family together. My husband just kept reaching back for the alcohol, then cocaine- crack, gambling, escorts. He went to many rehabs. He told me he loved Jesus and when I asked how he could take communion on Sundays, he said he always asked for Gods forgiveness. At the end of his life- even though he truly seemed to hate his addiction, he also had a great love/ lust for it. I often wondered if God cared about me and all the pain my husband caused me. He shattered my life and hurt both our boys terribly by his hypocrisy — there was so much deceit in his life, yet he really meant it when he said he loved Jesus. I have no doubt about Gods character. He will save anyone who wants to be saved. The apostle John speaks about people who have gone out from us and that meant they were never really with us. God says that “godly sorrow leads to repentance”. He says that many will come and say Lord,Lord and Jesus will say He never knew them. He warns us that whoever lives like this will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. I hope my husband is in heaven— reasonably thinking- I don’t know if he really wants to be there because all that he lived for and loved on earth isn’t there. All the people The Lord surrounded him with he deceived so he could also have that whole other life. Jesus said that we couldn’t serve both ways. God be true or every man a liar. Jesus came to save His people from their sin”. What happens to all those lives our sin rips through and leads them to think it’s all good cause God gives us grace to endure it? I was left with my life. Broken, worthless, beat up, used. My family destroyed. My oldest son just turned 30 and just left his 12 th rehab, he can’t stay sober more then 6 weeks, he can’t hold down a job, I had to have him evicted last summer- he’s homeless. My younger son has been sober for 5 months, the same amount of time he had before his dad died. The Lord is the judge. There is His grace and mercy and there is His justice and Truth. It’s too bad along side Brennens writings – his ex wife never wrote her own experience with The Lord regarding what Brennens drinking did to her and her daughters life and how Jesus cared for them. His grace is enough for all of us, it is still “life for a life” – our sacrifice of giving over our sins to Him, our life, for His. To be born again – asking Him to come inside our hearts and to wash us clean— not so we can look good until we go out again. Johns gospel says that Jesus knew what was in mans heart and He wouldn’t entrust Himself to them. I pray that Jesus can trust His heart with me. Brennen spoke many truths about Gods character. I forgive my husband for all he’s done but I can’t be reconciled to him, not only because he died; but because when he was living— he wouldn’t stop sinning and even with all of my years spent on him, all those years of grace that ended up being received by each piece I became- he believed Jesus would take care of him as he went on sinning. – I’m sorry Brennen never dwelt on repentance and what that really meant. For the love of Christ- Tamara
Just thinking of one of Brennan’s summary statements, that “God loves you as you are, not as you should be, because we’re never as we should be,” still stops me in my tracks. What a life-jarring, journey-changing, amazing thought. I don’t care to know where I would be if not for the honest, soft, embracing voices of Philip Yancey and Brennan Manning in my life.
“A bell is not a bell until you ring it, a song is not a song until you sing it. Love wasn’t put in your heart to stay, love isn’t love until you give it away.”
You (Amazing Grace) and Brennan (The Ragamuffin Gospel; and his talk at Farnham Castle, 1999) made God’s love a reality in my life and released me from my prison of worthless shame and life crippling guilt for not loving before it was too late.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I love you both in Christ
Antony
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.
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
Oh! I am so jealous that you knew Brennan. I’ve only just discovered his works … as I’m sure God knew that I needed them now. What a gift that you knew him in person. I’m so sad to have missed him on this side.
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.
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
So many second chances in life … because he is a man. So many wonderful, life giving experiences he enjoys … because he is a man. What became of the his ex-wife? She was left holding the bag. A metaphor for how the Catholic church operates.
I met Brennan many years ago. We invited him to our Parish to give a Retreat. Everyone loved Brennan’s message and everyone loved Brennan! He realized when we picked him up at the airport that we didn’t know he had left the priesthood and was now married. No one in our area knew; we were pretty remote! And would you believe even though he was no longer considered in ‘good standing’ with the Catholic Church his words were inspiring, loving. compassionate and life giving! Brennan was and will always be considered a huge blessing in my life and the life of many I know. I often wonder how he is and look back on our time together in a little parish in New Hampshire as a gift from God. God bless you Brennan.
Thank you for your “My friend Brennan” article, it is a very touching and heartwarming piece. I can hardly wait to read Brennan’s memoir. I too have often wondered “what if” or what might have been if I had not failed so many times in my life journey. But I’m often reminded that God really can work all things together for good, even our failings when we miss or fall short of the mark. I’ve come to believe that if it were not for some of my failures in life I would have remained proud, legalistic, and lacking in love, mercy, and grace towards others. It seems that it took a couple of big failures to shatter this part of my heart and open me up to the truth of God’s grace………….
In the struggles with my own brokenness its encouraging to know I’m not alone in this journey. I’m glad that there are those who are honest about their failings and still hold on to the GRACE that’s being held out for just the ones like me. Thank you for sharing this. Will look forward to Brennan’s latest book.
Pushpa
Nearly 20 years ago, while a student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, I attended a seminar led by Brennan on “Healing your Images of God.” My life was changed through his words and his experiences. In the that past 20 years I have followed his ministry, the ups and the downs of his life, rejoiced in his successes, and sorrowed in his failures … which are no different than those of my life. I look forward to this last book of his and know that my life will be further changed as God uses Brennan’s words and experiences to help me along my journey. I can say with utmost sincerity and security that my Abba loves me, Ragamuffin though I may be.
Interesting stuff. I know of another book that was just published last month titled, ‘All is Grace’ (Orbis) about the life of Dorothy Day, written by Jim Forest.
As always, thanks for sharing, Philip. I was introduced to Brennan’s work last summer when I worked the 12 steps with my small group. I read both “The Signature of Jesus” and “Abba’s Child”…both amazing. And, well, I finally got into an AA meeting as well. Long journey and still going, but better since taking some important first steps. I’ll never forget what you said to us one time about the difference between church and an AA meeting…if someone’s late to church, everyone kind of scowls at them…but, if someone is late to an AA meeting everyone stops and congratulates them because they knew it took them everything to get there. Very profound. Yea, I’m finding my way, only by His Grace. LOVE the title for Brennan’s new book, can’t wait to read it! I’m in the middle of another great one though, something like “What good is God”! haha! Love it! And, thank you for reading my neck story…I really appreciate it. God bless and thank you for letting God use you to encourage us!
Thank you for teaching us that maturing comes through embracing God’s grace: loved, forgiven and inviting us to newness. Too often I/we live with a mindset of “regrets.” I will use this teaching as my 12th grade students in Kingdom Living class write their spiritual autobiography as the final project of the high school years.
Christ’s love,
Henry
I am absolutely delighted to read That Brennan has a new book coming out. It should come as no surprise to any believer that the most edifying and helpful books on Christian discipleship are those authored by individuals who tell their stories with a “warts and all” take on their lives. Thank God for the Yanceys and Mannings of this life.
A beautiful, insightful piece on Brennan Philip. Thank you.
Bill Fleming.
All is grace….but, the church still seems to do not know that word….The church today is more concern with the ” show” , they do every sunday , then showing love….
How are we going to reach out if there is no love….
I felt the pain of “no grace”, how much it hurts….
We can tolerate the armies of our enemies but, the silence of our church….
Grace, grace…..it’s all because, for and about Grace!
If they only knew that word…
I too struggle with the “what if I hadn’t sinned so much” question. Thanks for pointing me in the opposite direction. I shudder to thing what my life would have been without Gods grace.
A beautiful and heartfelt tribute to your friend. I pre-ordered the book because you recommend it. I also learned what “grace” meant by reading your books. Thank you.
I watch closely for your thoughts and your sharing on prayer, grace and people who have learned to live by both. I look forward to reading Brennen Manning’s works. Thank you for passing this on.
Excited to hear he has a new book coming out!
Thanks for giving me the heads up on Brennan’s new book. How appropriate that you would write the forward for this book on “grace”! I look forward to reading it. I have read just about everything that the two of you have written and have been blessed by the “purpose in the pain” that you both have shared!
It continues to give this pilgrim hope to know that while the journey is rough, we never travel alone!
Grace & Peace- Amy