The Word of the Day

Grace.

The word of the day is grace.

Today and every day of our lives.

Grace gives us breath. We live. We move. We exist and coexist because of the grace given us to be here. To be alive now, at this time and place in all of creation.

That is our life’s work. Our job so long as we draw breath. To be creatures of grace who share that source of all good with one another.

We walk among each other as creatures of grace, beauty, light and we may not even know it. We may be caught up in the worldliness of our world. How we think our world ought to run as opposed to how it actually runs.

We may utterly ignore the reality that there are other people with us. Without those others, like it or not, our reality does not exist. We are less independent than we assume. The existence of those other men and women whom we wish were never in our lives give us the grace to go on.

They give it to us. However difficult, annoying, idiotic or difficult those others might be, those precise traits make it possible for us to receive grace. That grace, in turn, makes it possible for us not to be or behave like those very same persons we so dislike. There is no hard and fast rule that we will suddenly become saints if we behave better.

There is the knowledge that we need not behave worse. That maybe, just maybe, our lives will be blessed with a slight change for the better. Like the almost silent click of a light switch flipped on. We turn away from whatever was dragging us down.

Our minds and our hearts stay steady. We might even feel a little better about ourselves and our world. Simply by accepting that tiny — that hugely tiny — bit of grace we change our own lives.

We change the world.

We change both our universe and all of creation. By letting in grace, everybody’s life is improved.

Our busy lives lead us to think we haven’t time for something as simple as accepting grace. That is such an old-fashioned word. It’s too churchy of a concept.

We’ll let somebody buy us a coffee, but the idea of something unseen freely given is not in line with our not-so-true ideas that we have to work until we drop to get what we want. If we get what we want, are we getting what we need?

I know I’m not everybody’s cup of tea. That’s because I’m a strong cup of coffee.

I know that I don’t fall into line with societal norms. But then, how dreadfully tedious. Accepting the grace to deeply live in the fact that my life is very different from everyone else I meet smooths the way for my progress.

Which is why I am willing to accept grace. My life’s work has little to do with the jobs I held. I held a series of jobs in finance. It was not a career. My career came long before and was lived alongside my work life. It goes on.

It is more than just work. It is life.

My spiritual career is rich, demanding, draining and energizing all at the same time. It demands I give away whatever grace I receive. That I be constantly prepared to do more. To give away more of myself. To do whatever I am called upon to do whenever needed.

My job isn’t to save lives. I don’t put people in my spiritual lifeboat.

Like me, you may know people who survived Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. And other dictators of their ilk. It is not within my spiritual purview to relieve them of the anger and hatred they feel towards those men and those who helped them. The best I can do for them — or anybody who has unjustly suffered great physical, emotional and spiritual pain at the hands of others — is to do what little I can.

Listen. Stay silent while they relive their horrors. Be present.

To be present in silence is an act of grace.

Accepting grace in each moment to be simply alive to everything in life.