Embracing Grace

​There is a Grace that happens—a moment when you see that breaking of the spell of the ordinary.  It is a moment of both simplicity and complexity mashing together to create something glorious.  Grace. 
 
What is Grace?  I spent the past year pondering this question as I fumbled my way down a path of self-compassion.  I do not take the word Grace lightly.  I mean it in all its multilayered majesty.  Grace is our presence in the world.  Grace is that wondrous balance of existence that when we reach it, we smile knowing that all is right and good and as it should be.  Grace is worth.  It is the value of each of our human lives in the larger intertwined universe.  Grace is our talent and our offerings to the world.  Grace is kindness and goodness and patience and mercy.  One might call it soul or inner spark.  To me Grace is the core of what makes us human.  Galway Kinnell tells us in his poem “St. Francis and the Sow” of each thing flowering from within of self-blessing, of each thing having its own loveliness.  That’s Grace.
 
Each of us is filled with Grace.  We see glimpses, but rarely believe what we see.  It is more common to go through life blind to our own Grace even though we are likely to see it in others, especially those we love.  I think each of us travels our way searching for our own Grace, not knowing that we already have it. Self-compassion practice helps us find the Grace already residing deep within each of us.
 
I think I have spent a good portion of my first fifty years searching for Grace.  This past year has been particularly fruitful.  I discovered that all along Grace was deep inside me waiting to be noticed and nurtured by no one other than me.  I only had to open my heart to reveal it and set it free.

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