spring

To pray is to be vulnerably open to God's unpredictable grace.

Open to the Mystery of life and experience GRACE.

I was caught suddenly by a sweep of reverence, by a sensation that made me want to sink to my knees. For somehow I knew that I had stumbled upon an epiphany, a strange gracing of my darkness... That was the moment the knowledge descended into my heart and I understood. REALLY understood. Crisis, change, all the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping — they aren't voices simply of pain but also of creativity. And if we would only listen, we might hear such times as beckoning us to a season of waiting, to the place of fertile emptiness.

God may bless you with grace, no matter where you are, or what the conditions of your life. But we cannot demand that grace come to us. One of the most beautiful things about grace is that it is unearned. Like anything beautiful, if we chase it we are left only with a sense that we have missed it. Always remember: GRACE HAPPENS.

Grace has come to us in unexpected ways in the midst of life. We have known healing, courage, restored love — salvation. From these blessings of grace we see how to live in resistance to violence; we see how to live in love and in truth without denying bitter realities. We have felt a fire in the heart of things, intimated in moments of surprise, a power which guards, judges, and continually recreates life. We have sensed what Wordsworth called "a presence that disturbs me with joy ... something far more deeply interfused." This presence, felt as mystery and offered as faithfulness to one another, sustains and heals life. It calls for justice.

My human attempt to live the gentle life is my promise of cooperation with the grace of gentility once it touches my lífe. My attempt to grow in gentility may tempt me to forget that its outcome is only provisional, a shadow of thíngs to come — the real thing being the divine gentleness of soul that is a pure gift of the Holy.

Grace is the continuous overflowing of the Divine Essence, which is coming to all.

Peace is love resting in order to be renewed. The renewal takes place in the inner silence. In the desert we see things as they are. We are face to face with reality. The silence we observe externally does then become also the inner silence when the miracles of grace take place. Here we are stripped of the outward garments hiding our true selves. Here we can embrace the awfulness of our human condition and the awesomeness of the offered gift of grace. We are in touch at last with our reality.

After the service was over, I realized in reviewing my life that I no longer had anything to forgive — no grudges, resentments, memories of pain suffered at the hands of others. When I told my director, she said, "Molly, do you realize what a great grace you've been given?" Well, no, I hadn't, not until she said that, and only as I have reflected on it since. It is a great grace. And it's one that I'm not going to poke around in to try to scare up some lost memory or past injury in order to test its reality.