Growing up, I always had a sense of being "outside", more observer than participant. In thinking back on my childhood, I get a feeling of floating through life, not really being connected to the earth, maybe more ephemeral, than real. I had an invisible friend, "Mr. Nobody", whom I spoke to quite often and who lived down the bathroom drain at least until fifth grade and perhaps beyond. I believed in Fairies. When I was four or five?, I was in the bedroom of a farm house along the Chesapeake Canal that had been in the Price family for generations. Across the road was a cemetery. I was alone on the bed watching TV. It was dark out and I saw something like a pink rag pushed up against the window. Scared witless, I ran down the stairs to people. My mother relates that at this age, I was more comfortable among adults than kids my age. For my sixth birthday celebrated in Georgetown, I invited only adults. Savant or greedy? Adults bring presents that kids can't buy.
From fifth grade on, I lived in a town where most everybody had lived from at least kindergarten, if not birth. Though I graduated from High School there, having lived a total of 7 years, I was always non-native, other. My Daddy didn't wear cowboy boots like most other Dads. In High School, I usually had someone to sit with at lunch. We were the artists, the musicians. Many of us wore glasses, and were "smart". Perhaps I was a geek, a nerd, a dork. I yearned to belong. It was an Epiphany to spend 10th grade in a larger college town in Colorado. People talked to me, invited me places. I guess the lines between groups there were not as long-lasting or rigid because of the numbers of people that came and went from that town.
But throughout my life, the most uncomfortable feeling I ever had was the one of being in a crowd of people, not knowing anyone, and remaining apart/alone. When I joined the Peace Corps, though we all were strangers to each other, I remember attempting to start conversations, but not being able to sustain them. Others seemed to become best of buddies within minutes. I think there is nothing like the feeling of being alone in a crowd when you don't want to be.
So, later as a 29 yr. old, my husband and I came in late to a Harvest Dinner at the church we had just started attending. This was in the town in which we planned to raise a family. Most of the tables were taken, but there were some seats left. The ones next to a family of large people, which we had discovered when we sat next to them during worship smelled. I hesitated to sit next to them. In High School, that would have been Social Death. Once associated with the Large, Stinky people, always associated with the Large Stinky People, and then you might as well be one yourself. I couldn't tell you whether we sat there or not. But I saw an amazing thing. One of the regular members of church, on the vestry, came forward, sat and visited with her. As, I discovered, others did, regularly on other occasions. In this downtown church, we often had "street people" come in and share worship with us. During one of the services, one of the more notorious street people whose name everybody knew as "Annie" started on an anti-war rant during the sermon at the top of her lungs. One of the very gracious, and elegant members immediately went over to her and calmed her down. These people did not worry about status, or being thought odd. They acted immediately with grace and compassion. It was an Epiphany for me. Could I step out of my comfort zone and act completely out of selflessness in compassion, without a thought or regard of what others thought of me?
So, I began to watch, to see if there were opportunities of grace, that asked me to step out of my comfort zone, be aware of others and act to the good of others. This requires a number of things within a very short time, especially in this fast moving world. First you have to be aware. Watching the world as it goes rapidly by. The automobile with a flat tire. The woman struggling with her cane and too many packages, the scruffy student feeding the same rumpled dollar bill to be rejected again in the auto check-out lane. The sidewalk of the elderly woman next door that needs shoveling.Then you have to recognize the need for help, but you must not only think, "They need Help." Then you have to act on it. We don't get a lot of "panhandlers" in the snowy climes where I live, but I have stopped worrying about what they will spend it on, and help them out with a dollar or two. I figure the powers that be will either step in to assist, or they will not, but I choose to give them something to work with. I have started doing these things with a request for them to "pay it forward". I recently had a very interesting ride with a group of very high young male native Americans who claimed to be stranded. It was broad daylight, and for some reason, I never felt threatened. They insisted that I must get high too, but they were a hoot. Stupid? Maybe. Adventure? Definitely.
Moments of Grace abound in different ways, through different acts, sometime just in the observance and giving thanks for a moment of special beauty and silence in nature. Grace as defined by Merriam Webster has 8 different definitions, including: "virtue from God, special favor or privilege, an act of kindness, courtesy, clemency, prayer or blessing at a meal, the 3 Greek sister Goddesses, givers of charm and beauty."
In theology, Grace is a blessing from above bestowed regardless of merit. Wikipedia states that James Ryle suggests, "Grace is the Empowering Presence of God enabling you to be who he created you to be, and to do what He has called you to do." Bill Gothard says, "Grace gives the desire and the power that God gives us to do his will." It is translated from the Greek word charis, "Grace, the state of kindness and favor towards someone, often with a focus on a benefit given to the object." Charis is related to charisma which means gracious gift. Charis originates from the word Chairo (to rejoice, be glad, delighted). In Hebrew, the word is chen for "favor, grace or charm; grace is the moral quality of kindness; displaying a favorable disposition." The Hindu word for grace is Kripa. They consider it the ultimate key required for spiritual self-realization. The Hindu Sage Vasistha considered it to be the only way to transcend the bondage of many lifetimes of Karma.
Perhaps, in this day and time, Grace is the only way to escape bondage to ourselves and to the daily grind that can be our day to day existence. In watching for moments of Grace, might we develop a special awareness not only of the difficulties of the life of others, but also those moments of wonder and delight when we can help others transcend those little tragedies. But might we also be made aware of the larger joy which is the miracle of life. The miracle that the sun comes up every morning, and we are given another chance to start anew. To begin again, to reboot, to rediscover. To see what has always been before us, but to which we have been blind. There is a harshness, a sorrow, a destitution to life, but always on the flip side, is the ability to overcome the ugliness. To find the beauty, to look with new eyes, from which the scales are removed, to see anew. What could we see, if we refuse to accept old ways of seeing and thinking? To look at sorrow as opportunity.
What is it that we can do, to make of life a dance, a celebration of joy? How can we live life with grace? What does it take from inside of us, to sit "sad in the mad" but to do it with such grace and resolve, that we look like the Queen of England at tea? When I think of people that must embody living with grace, I think of Mahatma Gandhi, envisioning a different way of life and inspiring the Indian Cotton Farmers to strike so that their goods were used to weave the clothing in the British Empire. Or Mother Teresa, working in the most poverty-stricken, filthy slums of Calcutta, or the war torn areas of East and West Beirut, Lebanon during the 70's.
What can we do to be the largest people that we can be in our lives. Do we sit at the "stinky table", do we open ourselves up to ostracization? I don't know that this is absolutely necessary to live with Grace. But I think we have to think beyond that, and entertain the idea that it doesn't matter. The anti-war Activist Harold Zin said that in order to bring about a world without war, we have to "live the way we want the world to be." Imagine, if we all decided to live as if we lived in a world where all lived with grace, acted with compassion, generosity and outside of ourselves. Where even 1 in 20 of us acted that way. What would we look like then. If we were all obligated to "pay it forward"...such possibilities...such worldwide Grace...such Wonder.
In Peace and Grace,
From the Stinky Table
Kismet
From fifth grade on, I lived in a town where most everybody had lived from at least kindergarten, if not birth. Though I graduated from High School there, having lived a total of 7 years, I was always non-native, other. My Daddy didn't wear cowboy boots like most other Dads. In High School, I usually had someone to sit with at lunch. We were the artists, the musicians. Many of us wore glasses, and were "smart". Perhaps I was a geek, a nerd, a dork. I yearned to belong. It was an Epiphany to spend 10th grade in a larger college town in Colorado. People talked to me, invited me places. I guess the lines between groups there were not as long-lasting or rigid because of the numbers of people that came and went from that town.
But throughout my life, the most uncomfortable feeling I ever had was the one of being in a crowd of people, not knowing anyone, and remaining apart/alone. When I joined the Peace Corps, though we all were strangers to each other, I remember attempting to start conversations, but not being able to sustain them. Others seemed to become best of buddies within minutes. I think there is nothing like the feeling of being alone in a crowd when you don't want to be.
So, later as a 29 yr. old, my husband and I came in late to a Harvest Dinner at the church we had just started attending. This was in the town in which we planned to raise a family. Most of the tables were taken, but there were some seats left. The ones next to a family of large people, which we had discovered when we sat next to them during worship smelled. I hesitated to sit next to them. In High School, that would have been Social Death. Once associated with the Large, Stinky people, always associated with the Large Stinky People, and then you might as well be one yourself. I couldn't tell you whether we sat there or not. But I saw an amazing thing. One of the regular members of church, on the vestry, came forward, sat and visited with her. As, I discovered, others did, regularly on other occasions. In this downtown church, we often had "street people" come in and share worship with us. During one of the services, one of the more notorious street people whose name everybody knew as "Annie" started on an anti-war rant during the sermon at the top of her lungs. One of the very gracious, and elegant members immediately went over to her and calmed her down. These people did not worry about status, or being thought odd. They acted immediately with grace and compassion. It was an Epiphany for me. Could I step out of my comfort zone and act completely out of selflessness in compassion, without a thought or regard of what others thought of me?
So, I began to watch, to see if there were opportunities of grace, that asked me to step out of my comfort zone, be aware of others and act to the good of others. This requires a number of things within a very short time, especially in this fast moving world. First you have to be aware. Watching the world as it goes rapidly by. The automobile with a flat tire. The woman struggling with her cane and too many packages, the scruffy student feeding the same rumpled dollar bill to be rejected again in the auto check-out lane. The sidewalk of the elderly woman next door that needs shoveling.Then you have to recognize the need for help, but you must not only think, "They need Help." Then you have to act on it. We don't get a lot of "panhandlers" in the snowy climes where I live, but I have stopped worrying about what they will spend it on, and help them out with a dollar or two. I figure the powers that be will either step in to assist, or they will not, but I choose to give them something to work with. I have started doing these things with a request for them to "pay it forward". I recently had a very interesting ride with a group of very high young male native Americans who claimed to be stranded. It was broad daylight, and for some reason, I never felt threatened. They insisted that I must get high too, but they were a hoot. Stupid? Maybe. Adventure? Definitely.
Moments of Grace abound in different ways, through different acts, sometime just in the observance and giving thanks for a moment of special beauty and silence in nature. Grace as defined by Merriam Webster has 8 different definitions, including: "virtue from God, special favor or privilege, an act of kindness, courtesy, clemency, prayer or blessing at a meal, the 3 Greek sister Goddesses, givers of charm and beauty."
In theology, Grace is a blessing from above bestowed regardless of merit. Wikipedia states that James Ryle suggests, "Grace is the Empowering Presence of God enabling you to be who he created you to be, and to do what He has called you to do." Bill Gothard says, "Grace gives the desire and the power that God gives us to do his will." It is translated from the Greek word charis, "Grace, the state of kindness and favor towards someone, often with a focus on a benefit given to the object." Charis is related to charisma which means gracious gift. Charis originates from the word Chairo (to rejoice, be glad, delighted). In Hebrew, the word is chen for "favor, grace or charm; grace is the moral quality of kindness; displaying a favorable disposition." The Hindu word for grace is Kripa. They consider it the ultimate key required for spiritual self-realization. The Hindu Sage Vasistha considered it to be the only way to transcend the bondage of many lifetimes of Karma.
Perhaps, in this day and time, Grace is the only way to escape bondage to ourselves and to the daily grind that can be our day to day existence. In watching for moments of Grace, might we develop a special awareness not only of the difficulties of the life of others, but also those moments of wonder and delight when we can help others transcend those little tragedies. But might we also be made aware of the larger joy which is the miracle of life. The miracle that the sun comes up every morning, and we are given another chance to start anew. To begin again, to reboot, to rediscover. To see what has always been before us, but to which we have been blind. There is a harshness, a sorrow, a destitution to life, but always on the flip side, is the ability to overcome the ugliness. To find the beauty, to look with new eyes, from which the scales are removed, to see anew. What could we see, if we refuse to accept old ways of seeing and thinking? To look at sorrow as opportunity.
What is it that we can do, to make of life a dance, a celebration of joy? How can we live life with grace? What does it take from inside of us, to sit "sad in the mad" but to do it with such grace and resolve, that we look like the Queen of England at tea? When I think of people that must embody living with grace, I think of Mahatma Gandhi, envisioning a different way of life and inspiring the Indian Cotton Farmers to strike so that their goods were used to weave the clothing in the British Empire. Or Mother Teresa, working in the most poverty-stricken, filthy slums of Calcutta, or the war torn areas of East and West Beirut, Lebanon during the 70's.
What can we do to be the largest people that we can be in our lives. Do we sit at the "stinky table", do we open ourselves up to ostracization? I don't know that this is absolutely necessary to live with Grace. But I think we have to think beyond that, and entertain the idea that it doesn't matter. The anti-war Activist Harold Zin said that in order to bring about a world without war, we have to "live the way we want the world to be." Imagine, if we all decided to live as if we lived in a world where all lived with grace, acted with compassion, generosity and outside of ourselves. Where even 1 in 20 of us acted that way. What would we look like then. If we were all obligated to "pay it forward"...such possibilities...such worldwide Grace...such Wonder.
In Peace and Grace,
From the Stinky Table
Kismet
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