Grace.
Such a nice sounding word, isn’t it? Something to put on a Hallmark card. A platitude, mundane, like the meal it precedes, the name of someone white, privileged, perhaps a little bland but thoroughly respectable. Grace calls to mind forgiveness, if only from habit, equanimity verging on indifference, a virtue extolled from the pulpit to keep the sheep in line.
If I’ve been a little harsh, it’s only to remind us how much we take grace for granted, how little we understand it, even as we invoke its powers in situations beyond our control. Grace demands surrender, but does that mean passivity? Is it an act, or the absence of one? Grace belongs to the meek, right? The meek, who only inherit the world on paper. We do not think of warriors, thinkers, explorers of the unknown.
I’m here to tell you otherwise.
Grace was on my mind a lot during the long ordeal of 2020. All around me, relationships were tested, livelihoods diminished, long-suppressed fears unearthed as the bulwark of habit crumbled away. We were shaken from our certainties — the good, the bad, and the ugly — and we fell or we awoke, depending on our vantage point. Most of us did both. These are the times that call for grace. It’s part of the platitude. We must persevere in the face of adversity. We must endure. Forbear. Grace is a muscle exercised through restraint. Isn’t that what grace is all about? Isn’t it just another word for pious resignation?
I think the true nature of grace can only be glimpsed against the backdrop of our own mortality. Every other virtue aids in our survival, and from the moment we’re born, it is incumbent on us to survive — physically, emotionally, psychologically. We must eat and grow; we must be valued and loved; we must vindicate our talents and hide our deficiencies. We might end up destitute, unwanted, alone, even on a planet of seven billion souls. And yet, all the striving fails us in the end. Engineered, to survive, we are destined to fail, and all our successes are provisional, temporary and unstable.
Enter grace.
Grace is the voice of reality. Grace says, this is what is so, and this is what you are. You are mortal, and therefore your strength cannot consist of perseverance. You are fragile, and so your vulnerability is essential to your native self. Don’t hide it. Don’t pretend. Your body ages, your circumstances change, you are fated to lose what you cherish most — and you can’t get out of it, no matter how much you hide, or deny, or rage against the dying of the light.
And all the while, grace is just there.
What happens when we contemplate grace? When we stop surviving, hiding, denying? True, everything arises and passes away, and yet, we are able to contemplate this, to approach and bear witness to the things we cannot change, even as we’ve striven to change what we could. And this capacity is strange and wonderful in and of itself. Grace takes guts. In the face of our greatest fears, a new capacity is born, not for overcoming, nor succumbing, but for participating in the grand mystery of existence. We stand in the presence of the inarguable and say yes, and that yes opens a door. We say yes, again and again; we say yes when we think we can’t; we say yes because all other avenues have been exhausted. And something grows. A new kind of time emerges, marked not by the passing of our finite days but rather by a deepening awareness of what endures, made possible only by means of contemplating what does not. We participate in something grand and true, beyond our comprehension and yet as tangible as a mother’s hand.
Grace. Is it active or passive? Neither. Both. Perhaps we can call it love. Perhaps we can call it God. We can call it reality, or ourselves, or simply yes. We can’t hold it or understand it, yet it’s always with us. The very fears we’ve shunned, the pain we’ve feared — these are doorways, so we needn’t look far. Open doors. Say yes when you don’t know how. Notice. That’s all.
And so, on this Easter Sunday, I give you the Serenity prayer as a question to inhabit:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
Grace as crucible. Grace as frontier. Grace as friend.
I love this. So many thinks to think about here. I will need to reread it three more times to digest it so that I can comment. Just lovely. Thank you
Yes, I feel like you and I could have been having this conversation face to face, Britty. It’s right up our alley. I’m so glad you took the time to go with me here. We will continue the conversation together over a glass in Napa!
I’ve just read this article on the weekend of Palm Sunday 2023. This week leading into Easter is my favorite time of the year. I cherish my church’s traditions but sometimes even beautiful language can lose its “salt.” Your insights into the idea of “Grace” have restored the seasoning. What a brightened taste!
Thank you, Kathleen Poulsen
PS. I’ve been enjoying your articles in OregonSCBWI’s Newsletter
Kathleen, thank you so much for reading, and for sharing your thoughts! It really makes my day to discover a new connection like this — part of the magic of putting ourselves out into the world, right? I’m so glad this post hit a chord. And so nice to meet a fellow SCBWI member!
There is so much beauty and wisdom in what you have shared. It goes right to the heart of the matter – the deepest truth. And at the end of the day gives us our sense of place in this mystery. Thank you so very much! Love you, Mom
Thank you, Mom, for that wonderful conversation where we explored exactly this! Talking to you is like talking to myself — in the best of ways. I love you too!
After reading this lovely piece silently, I shared it aloud with my husband. Thank you for your amazing ability to tap into emotional truths, recognize our human struggles, and touch the human soul.
Wow, Nancy, you are very welcome. Thank YOU for taking the time to take it all in and then to share it with your husband. We spend so much time alone as writers, don’t we, and it’s such a treasure to me to know that we’ve connected in this way 🙂
Julie
this is wonderful! I’m continually surprised at the way you use words to enchant. Meanings slither and change. Just when I think, “Oh, I get it!” you refocus my eyes and brain, astonishing me once again. So proud to know you. ange
Ange! I’m so glad you enjoyed this! Whenever I hear you read, I always find myself delighted at your playfulness, the way that you revel in the little things and bring them to life. And your comment here is no exception! I’m so proud to know you too 🙂
I certainly agree with your insightful observations, but it seems to me you are speaking more of courage than grace. Apart from physical grace (a completely separate thing), I think grace is either being courteous to others, or (more important to me), the wholly unearned favor of God.
It’s an interesting question! I guess I would say that grace entails courage. The kind of grace I’m speaking to is a willingness to embrace what is so, particularly when it is a reality that we don’t want to accept — the loss of something or someone we hold dear, a painful circumstance, something that requires us to look deeper, past all the things that change to what endures. I think it also entails courtesy in the sense that we quit arguing or being at odds with life. And I think this kind of radical acceptance is also an expression of spirituality. So perhaps our definitions are not so far apart 🙂
I keep thinking about your comment, and in particular the part about grace being the wholly unearned love of God. I think I’m saying that too, but in different terms. In particular here: Grace is the voice of reality. Grace says, this is what is so, and this is what you are. You are mortal, and therefore your strength cannot consist of perseverance. You are fragile, and so your vulnerability is essential to your native self. Don’t hide it. Don’t pretend. Your body ages, your circumstances change, you are fated to lose what you cherish most — and you can’t get out of it, no matter how much you hide, or deny, or rage against the dying of the light.
And all the while, grace is just there.
If you substitute “God” for “reality” or even “grace,” what you have is the idea that when we stop striving, which is an aspect of surviving, something starts to emerge — an awareness that we are loved in the deepest possible way just by virtue of “being.” That is how I think of God’s love. But I don’t think of it against the backdrop of a religious tradition, so I articulate it in different ways. Anyways, thanks for deepening the discussion!