Will I Ever Change? Fresh Hope for the Spiritually Stuck Y ears ago I got stranded with a few friends and strangers in the elevator of a tall building. We waited for help to arrive, chatting awkwardly and laughing nervously. I’m not claustrophobic and don’t remember feeling terror. But I definitely felt helpless. It was clear that we were never going to escape that suspended
Marilynne Robinson’s fictional character Jack Boughton is that kind of stuck. He sabotages himself, hurts others, and damages relationships, sometimes through his own deliberate choices and sometimes without conscious intention. Cycling downward into prison and homelessness, he misses his mother’s funeral and breaks his father’s heart. He is “oppressed by that old feeling that he was enmeshed in a web of potential damage that became actual in one way or another if he so much as breathed” (Jack, 274). Throughout the novel, Robinson presses the question: Can a man change? I resonate with that question because I’ve asked it many times, over many years, about myself.
metal box without intervention from the outside. And sure enough, within 45 minutes or so we heard noises. The elevator doors opened. Friendly faces appeared above us. We lived to tell the tale. Stuck. As helpless as we felt that day, there is a far worse feeling we experience: feeling hopelessly stuck in ourselves, believing we’ll never be able to change.
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