Dwell In Grace

 

Our Highest Power

“Grace is the highest power we have available to us. Utilize the graces that run through your soul. Don’t just think about them every now and again. Dwell in them. Breathe them in like air. When you are losing power to something close your eyes and pray for grace to retrieve your spirit from a bad decision or an external fear. Don’t wait for illness to wake you up. Think like a mystic out of a monastery.”

Caroline Myss

           I had a conversation yesterday with my friend Garvice about life in general and about the role that grace has played in our lives. It’s not a stretch to say that I would not be here were it not for grace—maybe none of us would be. I was spared from birth. I survived asthma, a painful family, and my own self-destructive lifestyle—I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, I’m the only member of my original family still living, and I think there must be a reason for that. We talked about the way life has brought us full circle, as if grace keeps giving us a chance to correct our mistakes by presenting them over and over again.

          I wonder what might happen if we were to take Caroline Myss’s advice and dwell in grace. Think of all the times in your life when things could have gone terribly wrong and didn’t. Personally, I think of all the bad decisions, and stupid mistakes I’ve made and know that grace alone has brought me through. I know people right now who are facing catastrophic illness with courage and resolve. They dwell in grace.

          Grace is another word for the power of love, for the force of compassion in the universe. It requires trust. When we live in fear we are saying to the power of love, “I don’t trust you.” Perhaps we don’t feel worthy, or we think it’s a bogus notion, or that it’s something the Catholic church made up to control our minds. But grace is an archetypal force of energy, available to anyone who recognizes it. Which doesn’t mean that nothing painful will ever happen in your life—I guarantee that it will. But grace, asked for and trusted, will support your courage and help you to cope.

          Most of us, myself included, only recognize grace when we are saved from a disaster—like a hurricane, or cancer. We recognize it when a tornado sucks up someone else’s house and misses ours. We recognize it when the lab-tests come back clean, or when the surgeon says, “I was able to get it all.” But how would our lives be different if we were to recognize grace every time we wake in the morning and open our eyes to a brand-new day. Every time we walk around our neighborhood and watch leaves tumbling, and the sunlight through golden autumn trees. Or maybe, see it in the eyes of a friend that say, “I love you. You’re important to me. You make my life richer.” Or every time the feeling of overwhelming gratitude grabs our own heartstrings. That’s grace, y’all. It’s pure grace. Dwell in it.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane