Grace

It is a rare thing that I resist the morning.  Over and over again, no matter how challenging the days are, no matter if I have ended the evening before in tears of anger or sadness, a new sun strikes me as a fresh beginning and I awaken with enthusiasm to begin the day. It has been that way for years, and I have been sustained by an energy that moves me from within.  While I have struggled with the sorrows of life, I have not been overcome by despair. 

But this morning, and the past few mornings, I could not rouse myself with that familiar sense of newness....and rather than bring myself to sit on the cushion, I went instead to the dull escape of email.  But it was there, on my computer screen, that I found small snippets of grace.  In my inbox sat a morning meditation that offered words of understanding and inspiration... and another email from a fellow congregant that washed away a worry I had been carrying... a reminder to be at ease, that all shall be well.  A little touch of grace.

Perhaps my desire to remain curled inside the covers is more a longing for rest than it is a caving in to the ferocious jaws of depression and despair.  Perhaps it is simply a recognition of all I am so exhausted from carrying, and the desire to let go. But "letting go" can go a couple different ways-- it can mean letting go into something dark that shuts down the heart and soul... or it can mean letting go into a larger  kind and loving presence that carries us. 

I remember an anti-oppression retreat I participated in a few years ago which involved long periods of check-ins in a large group.  Over and over, people of diverse race, gender, sexual orientation, and class shared from the deep pain and joy of their being-- and over and over, I listened attentively, holding with love all that was shared...until a moment came when I could hold no longer, and I collapsed in an outpouring of tears for pain I also carried in my being.  As I cried, arms and hands reached out to hold me;  it was my immediate response to say- "I'm ok"... but our facilitator answered, "No, Let us hold you", and I fell back into arms-- from exhaustion into love. 

So I wonder at this moment, when I feel that sense of worrying about and caring for more than I can handle, that same desire to let go-- to fall back into arms that can hold me. And I lean into these words, received in my email this morning from "A Common Meditation for All Souls"... I lean into the gift of grace....

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we love, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure has become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted. You are accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know….” If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience, we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed.

(Paul Tillich, 1886 – 1965)