Opinions
Mister God, This Is Grace
If you are put off by spiritual laments, feel free to click away.
Mister God, This Is Anna is an old book about a friendship between a 16-year-old boy, Fynn, and a four-year-old foundling. I didn’t get to read it till 2001, when my sister Aie gifted me with a copy. It was riveting; I devoured it in two sittings.
The corona virus quarantine makes one look through bookshelves again, in lieu of bookshops, which are all closed, and discover old readings.
This book whispered, Read me again. I have barely gone through page 10 when I felt myself lugubriously sobbing. It was not because of the cruel lashes etched on Anna’s bruised body, but because I shrunk in shame at the way she went past them—more than I or any adult could, over a slightly bruised ego.
Anna is unscathed, her faith in and knowledge of Mister God is whole and unshaken. She seems like a theologian, living spiritual doctrines both in mind and heart, with a full sense of God’s nature.
Fynn is a foil to Anna’s pint-sized Albert Schweitzer. She asks difficult questions, which require unconventional answers. She knows about evil, pain, and abuse, but shows no sign of suffering from what we conveniently call trauma.
By telling Anna’s story, the author (Fynn) memorializes a young but awe-inspiring kid who is unforgettable. Constantly pondering various aspects of her faith, Anna believes that religion, to be meaningful, must be lived.
“She never made eight years, she died by an accident, with a grin on her beautiful face. She died saying, ‘I bet Mister God lets me get into heaven for this’.”
Reading it again 19 years later while anxious over the pandemic, I do not find it only moving, but disturbing. Anna, an unschooled waif, humbles adults ten times her age.
Adulthood blinds us to see beauty where there is uncertainty. To Anna, things may be chaotic, but beauty is undiminished.
Today, many people—especially me—have been asking, “Why, God?”
But rereading Mister God, This Is Anna, I find myself thinking, Mister God, This Is Grace. It’s like having a bittersweet sense of what life is about and a capacity to make the mess bearable.
It is mortifying but liberating.
