Etymologically the word “wrong” is derived from the Old English wrangr meaning “crooked, twisted, wry, wrong”. When a rope becomes twisted, I do not throw away the rope. I untangle the knot and put the rope to its proper use.

The things I label “wrong” serve a useful purpose in my life. The more I am able to attend to the role “wrong” can play in my growth as a person, the less I will be inclined to see things as “wrong”.

Christopher Fry, in his poetic play “A Sleep Of Prisoners” portrays a war prisoner who seeks to awaken his fellow sleepwalking prisoners with a speech in which he speaks of the function “wrong” can serve.

The human heart can go to the lengths of God.

Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul [the human] ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise
Is exploration into God…
…It takes
So many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake for pity’s sake?

Affairs are “soul size“; the circumstances of our lives are perfectly fitted to open us to a deeper dimension of life in which we have the capacity to become conscious that “The human heart can go to the lengths of God.” We have the capacity for God.

The sound of “thunder” may seem to drown out the hints of the divine. But, if we listen more deeply we will hear that “The thunder is the thunder of the floes,/ The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.” The thunder calls us to listen more carefully, to hear more deeply, to open more fully to the signs of “upstart Spring“. Life is breaking out all around.

Listening and opening are the disciplines that help us take “The longest stride of soul [the human] ever took“, the stride that “Is exploration into God“.

The twists and turns in the road all confront me with the one essential question of life -

But will you wake for pity’s sake?

So much of life is calculated to put me to sleep. I need the friction of “wrong” to jar me out of my habitual slumber.

When I reduce life to labels, I miss the catalyst my circumstances contain to awaken. When I resist my life experience by labeling things as “wrong”, “bad”, or “unlikeable”, I become dulled to the full impact of those experiences. I risk missing the potential learning they hold.

Resistance to what is always shuts me down. I become less sensitive to the subtle promptings of life. I miss the messages my life has to teach.

Those things I tend to identify as “wrong” are all opportunities for spiritual practice. They are occasions for growth in patience, for letting go and softening to the realities of life as they present themselves, especially when those circumstances are not as I might have chosen.

When I embrace my life as it comes to me in all of its messiness and pain, my heart grows. My capacity for compassion deepens. My ability to see my connection with all of life is enhanced. These are the gifts of “wrong” that make it possible, even in the midst of “wrong” to be grateful for all the circumstances of my life. As Christopher Fry concludes,

Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere

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