Humble Pie and Sour Grapes

Okay.  This is the third week since being laid off.  It is time to talk about two foods I have been living on since my termination:  sour grapes and humble pie.  

Humble pie comes first.  In fact, you get one or two big spoonfuls of this simultaneously with your pink slip.  More of that later.  The only thing I will say here is that humble pie is way more filing than cheese cake.  When you leave the office you can barely make it to your car.  You feel as though you’ve gain an instant ten pounds.  

I ate so many sour grapes within the first week of my unemployment that I spent the entire next day with stomach pains.  The day after that, however, I was back to snacking, popping them into my mouth like popcorn.  This even when the grapes were so sour that my eyes were watering and my tongue was paralyzed.  

I must digress for a moment because there is at least one person out there― rather intelligent and very self-satisfied― who will say, “Why don’t you just make lemonade?”  If you can go right from lemon to lemonade, then you are in the company of people like Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul.  You are already polishing up that saint head-gear that you will be wearing after you die.  Me?  I can’t even find the lemons these  people talk about.  I did spend an entire day searching.  They are small yellow things right?

     Let’s face it, blaming every person in all three times zones (paste, present, and future) is not healthy.  There is, however, an immediate surge in adrenaline.  I think this may even be necessary to get some of us through the first day or two of a terrible situation.  I also think that among the countless sour grapes I have eaten, some of them represent valid points.  Sour grapes are not sour because they are necessarily untruths.  The are sour because of the ramifications for one’s psyche.  Let us say that the boss is an asshole.  I mean that if you connected him to the assholometer, that indicator would be up near the 100 percent level.  And then you go analyzing him and find 20 specific examples of his assholism.  These may well be true.  But they are still sour grapes and may be just as debilitating as blaming God or President Obama for your job loss.  I know it is not easy― I can take three truths and turn them into 50 sour grapes.  I can also find sour grapes in the least likely places― a teacher I had in middle school, the Koch Brothers, Apple Computers, etc. 

The problem with using measurements is that you can never be satisfied.  You readily exchange the Assholometer for the “Not Worth Being Alive” or, my favorite, the Hellometer (I like the Dante’s version, the Inferno Scale).  Now the Asshole becomes so bad that I would stick him down with Brutus and Judas in the lowest level of hell.  

     Sour grapes is a defense mechanism.  But defense mechanisms rather quickly become offensive, in both senses of the word.  One does not want to remain passive when one is fired, because being fired is a life-altering assault against which you have little if any power.  Sour grapes put us on the attack.  I like to season my sour grapes with a dozen or so curse words I can then use in limitless combinations― a good curse word can wreck the most sacred or the most neutral noun to which it is attached.  It gets ugly quickly.  

     It was only in the third week that I went for the pie.  Humble pie is a lot like limburger cheese― an acquired taste.  There is nothing tempting about it.   When you have been living on sour grapes for two weeks, however,and there is nothing else to eat, it is better than nothing (barely). The problem with humble pie is getting it down in the first place.  Sour grapes have the same appeal that sour patch candies do― there is a market for them.  The minute humble pie hits the tongue, the body responds with the gag reflex.  I am actually surprised Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods has not featured humble pie among some of his other favorites: squirrel brains, cow urine, spleen sandwiches, raw fish eyeballs, and maggot-filled cheese.  But it is so hard to eat much humble pie because we are not wired that way― we are conditioned for advancement.  

     A little bit of humble pie, however, may be just what the doctor ordered.  You

quickly discover such realities as:  the business did not fall apart without you; you are replaceable; you are capable of really fucking up big time; the life you thought you were leading was really controlled by someone who can take your livelihood away; you are now one of those whom you may have always stereotyped as having intrinsic flaws; the qualities that you liked most about yourself were the very one’s your employer transformed into faults and then fired you for them.  Humble pie definitely takes you down a peg or two.  It’s like you are playing parcheesi, and you are one roll away from getting into the home safety zone, when a competitor lands on you so that you have to start all lever again.  The feeling of loss is what fills you up.  Standing up is hard enough, let alone brushing yourself off.  

So what can you as a Christian do? 

1.  Know who you are!!!  

Remind yourself of your role model:  Jesus Christ.  On Palm Sunday he was hailed as the Messiah, King of Israel, worthy of David’s throne.  Five days later he was arrested.  On the sixth day he was met with shouts of “Crucify him!!”  Now if this happened to the Son of God in six days, are you surprised that it happened to you after one year or twenty years of work.  Even if you were the greatest employee in the history of your company, you are not Jesus Christ.  So remember what Jesus asserted when he was at his weakest, when others were telling him who he was or how much power they had over him.  Before the kangaroo court when asked if he were the Son of God, he responded:  “I am:  and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of the Power, and coming in the clouds" (Mark 14:62).  And later when Pilate threatened Jesus with his own power, Jesus answered, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above” (John 19:11a).  Jesus KNEW who he was.  You need to know who you are, and you are NOT what your boss says about you.  You are not what the subsequent gossip mill claims you to be.  

You are blessed.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: 4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved . 7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; 

(Ephesians 1:3-7)

And you are loved:

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

2.  Know that God is in direct control of your individual life!

He is the only power that can produce greater good from evil.  Some of you know that you may not actually be doing what you ant to be doing.  Maybe this is a way, albeit not an easy one, to get you out of a rut and into something you enjoy.  I am not saying that God created the bad situation.  I am saying that God has the power to convert this bad situation into something good for you.  

The financial problems may be enormous.  Do not think big.  Consider what you and your family need to survive.  Work at surviving.  DO this while you are studying for another career, or searching for a better job.  And do not take something just for the money.  That is a recipe for making a bad situation worse.  At this point you need to be sitting on a mountain in Galilee listening to Jesus’ words of comfort:  

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:  And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. 
(Matthew 6:28-33)

3.  Know that God Listens to and Answers Prayers!

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you (

Saint Augustine characterizes this kind of constant prayer (always, asking, always seeking, and always knocking) not so much as a way to get what you want, but as the best way to establish a real parent-child relationship with God, when he writes:  

Diu desiderata, dulcius obtinentur: cito autem data, vilescunt. Pete, quaere, insta. Petendo et quaerendo crescis, ut capias. Servat tibi Deus, quod non vult cito dare; ut et tu discas magna magne desiderare. Inde oportet semper orare, et non deficere 10.    Augustine Sermo 61

Those things long desired will be sweeter when you receive them; things given quickly will grow cheap.  Seek, ask, and don;t give up.  By seeking and by asking you will grow so that you may receive.  God is protecting you―he does not wish to give you things quickly so that you may greatly desire great things.  That is why is it good to prayer and not to cease praying.