{"id":683,"date":"2007-12-04T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2007-12-04T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-taking-inventory.html"},"modified":"2007-12-04T09:00:24","modified_gmt":"2007-12-04T09:00:24","slug":"saving-grace-taking-inventory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-taking-inventory.html","title":{"rendered":"Saving Grace: Taking Inventory of Our Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"revised%20grace.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/71\/import\/revised%20grace.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"240\" \/><br \/>\nI\u2019m not sure if the producers of TNT\u2019s series <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnt.tv\/series\/savinggrace\/\">&#8220;Saving Grace,&#8221;<\/a> timed the episodes to match the appropriate scripture readings of the Christian liturgical year, but they sure did nail the message of the first week of Advent: \u201cYo, Grace! Wake up! Because you\u2019re headed to hell!\u201d<br \/>\nI absolutely loved the dialog of the first scene between Earl the \u201cLast-Chance\u201d Angel (Leon Rippy) and Oklahoma City police officer Ham Dewey (Kenny Johnson), Grace\u2019s partner on the job and in bed (even though he\u2019s technically, ah, married).<br \/>\nHam and Earl are sitting at a local bar listening to the weather report about the severe tornado headed their way.<br \/>\n\u201cLooks like I\u2019m going to have to cancel my fishing trip,\u201d says Earl (who no one can tell is an angel until he flashes his wings, which is totally cool) to Ham.<br \/>\n\u201cYou don\u2019t want to be out in this stuff,\u201d Ham replies.<br \/>\n\u201cWhat are you doing out?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cI work for the city. \u2026 What do you do?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019m just here helping out a friend. . . . She doesn\u2019t want my help.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cMaybe she does but she doesn\u2019t know how to ask.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cShe thinks she can do it all by herself, but I keep telling her nobody can. . . . But the girl is stubborn.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cOh yeah? She\u2019s got a lot of sharp edges? Know matter how you hold her you\u2019re going to get hurt.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cLet me ask you something. How do you go about saving someone who doesn\u2019t want to be saved?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cHey. When you figure that one out, you let me know! But I don\u2019t know how much choice you have, because as mad as you get, if you love her, what are you going to do?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cWhy does God make you so darn fragile? Maybe he can give you some shells like turtles have!\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYeah, definitely.\u201d<br \/>\nThe two guys walk over to the door and look out at the ominous sky.<br \/>\n\u201cThat\u2019s an ugly sky,\u201d says Ham.<br \/>\n\u201cYeah. I\u2019ve seen a sky like that before,\u201d replies Earl. \u201cA sky like that makes you think about the big things \u2026 like life, death, how they get that squiggly line on the cupcakes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nMan is that fantastic dialog. I especially like the cupcake line.<br \/>\nAnd I swear the scriptwriters must have read their lectionaries because a team of bishops couldn\u2019t have come up with a more appropriate episode for the first week of Advent. Because here\u2019s our assignment for this week: think about the big things, take an inventory of our life, and list the necessary amendments. Then, somewhere around New Year\u2019s, pull out the list and get started.<br \/>\nIn recovery language (the 12 steps), we\u2019d refer to this exercise as steps four (Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves) and five (Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another person the exact nature of our wrongs).<br \/>\nI hated those steps when I first read them. And I can\u2019t say my opinion has changed much. The year I got sober I made a list of everyone  whom I had wronged or stole from or lied to. Then my sponsor and I decided on a small list of folks whom I should really make my amends to in person.<br \/>\nOne was the manager of the swim club I used to lifeguard at. The summers of my sophomore and junior years in high school, I stole money from him to buy booze. It was incredibly easy. A member would hand me a five-dollar bill for her guest. I put the five money in my pocket and didn\u2019t record a guest.<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019m so sorry, Mr. C.,\u201d I said, \u201cfor stealing money from you three years ago.\u201d<br \/>\nBoy did I felt like a moron that day. Especially when he stared back at me with a half-grin, waiting for me to crack up like Sponge Bob and start laughing.<br \/>\nHenri Nouwen has a great line about this very task \u2026 taking inventory: \u201cThe more I come in touch with what happened in the past, the more I come in touch with what is to come.\u201d<br \/>\nEven as Grace isn\u2019t ready to do that herself in last night\u2019s episode, she inspires one of her victims\/criminals get there.<br \/>\nWhen the tornado touches down, a woman is trapped in the building where Grace is investigating a case: a school bus was sent out with a bad axle, which led to the death of three children.<br \/>\nThe owner of the repair shop where the bus was serviced knew that properly fixing the axle would take too long\u2014he\u2019d lose the contract. So he made his sister doctor the paperwork in order to send the bus out as soon as possible.<br \/>\nGrace figures out that the woman trapped in the building is the sister, the woman who signed off on the paperwork. She interrogates her, and finally the sister confesses.<br \/>\n\u201cHe said we had to keep them rolling\u2014that nothing was going to happen,\u201d the woman explained sobbing.<br \/>\n\u201cOh God, those babies! What did I do to those babies!\u201d the woman cries.<br \/>\nShe begs Grace to give her an overdose of morphine, and then when Grace refuses, she tried to slit her wrist with a piece of broken glass.<br \/>\nGrace handcuffs herself to the woman and says, \u201cIf God wants you, he\u2019s going to have to go through me.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cForgive me!\u201d the woman yells \u2026 to Grace, to God, to herself.<br \/>\nAt that moment the sky opens up as if it\u2019s a window to heaven, and Grace hears a bird chirping.<br \/>\n\u201cYou can\u2019t have her!\u201d Grace yells to God, or whoever. \u201cShe\u2019s mine, you son of a bitch.\u201d<br \/>\nFinally the tornado is over and Grace loads the woman into an ambulance. An hour or so later she learns that the ambulance was t-boned by a city bus. Everyone survived but the sister of the crook.<br \/>\nThe final scene is as intense as the opening. Grace is analyzing the woman\u2019s body in the morgue.<br \/>\nEarl shows up.<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry about the way this turned out,\u201d he says.<br \/>\n\u201cShut your mouth. I\u2019m tired of you. I can\u2019t listen to you anymore,\u201d Grace replies. . .. \u201cAll I wanted to do is save her.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYou did.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cShe\u2019s dead.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYou just don\u2019t get it, do you, child?\u201d<br \/>\nAnd you hear the chirping again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m not sure if the producers of TNT\u2019s series &#8220;Saving Grace,&#8221; timed the episodes to match the appropriate scripture readings of the Christian liturgical year, but they sure did nail the message of the first week of Advent: \u201cYo, Grace! Wake up! Because you\u2019re headed to hell!\u201d I absolutely loved the dialog of the first&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration-and-prayer"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Saving Grace: Taking Inventory of Our Lives - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-taking-inventory.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saving Grace: Taking Inventory of Our Lives - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m not sure if the producers of TNT\u2019s series &#8220;Saving Grace,&#8221; timed the episodes to match the appropriate scripture readings of the Christian liturgical year, but they sure did nail the message of the first week of Advent: \u201cYo, Grace! 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Wake up! 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