The state of grace is a condition in which all growth is effortless, a transparent, joyful acquiescence that is a general requirement of all existence. Your own body grows naturally and easily from its time of birth, not expecting resistance but taking its miraculous unfolding for granted; using all of itself with great, gracious, creatively aggressive abandon. You were born in a state of grace; it is impossible for you to leave it. You will die in a state of grace . . . You cannot "fall out of" grace, nor can it be taken from you.
Creation has been given to us as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into the human soul. Sun and moon, night and day, rain, sea, crops, the flowering tree: all these things are transparent.
~ by Thomas Merton in "Horizons" thanks to Nancy Conley