What is Grace?

The Great Connector

Image by Willfried Wende from Pixabay

I’ve only ever known one Grace, a cousin of my mother’s who was overly fond of cake, with the consequences thereof. But she had presence, possibly because she needed to step into it.

Oh, ten years or more ago, a young man in my spiritual group suggested we might all want to choose different names to use amongst ourselves. Nothing ever came of it, but I considered and thought I’d really like to be a Grace.

Now, Grace is not a name you take on easily. It comes with expectations. Grace suggests elegance. Ease with oneself and the world. Flow.

Probably lower cake consumption.

I once tried it on for size at Starbucks. By the time my tea was ready, I nearly confessed. Instead, I stepped up, took my Earl Grey with a confidence I didn’t feel and, as gracefully as I could, eased myself into a seat.

Last week I watched a discussion on French TV with three recently published authors. The host asked each of them for a word that either brought them down or lifted them.

“Délicatesse,” said Charlotte Casiraghi, (recent author of “La fêlure” and granddaughter of Princess Grace of Monaco). “It lands perfectly without pushing.”

To me, “délicatesse” has the sound of its meaning. I imagine fine lace or a silvery sugar lattice.

Whereas the English “delicacy” makes me think of a squat iced petit four. (Yes, I am overly fond, etc.)

“Délicatesse” is light. “Tact,” the figurative meaning, is heavy and abrupt.

And that light touch brings me back to grace.

The past couple of weeks I have been galloping through The Unselected Journals of Emma Lion by Beth Brower (shockingly inauthentic English, but great entertainment). One sentence brought me up: “…I began to suspect the luck Hawkes spoke of might really only be an awareness, an awareness of grace.”

Meaning grace turns things around when you realize it has always been there.

Grace is the silver lining.

It is the spark captured by the artist.

Grace is what takes us from “there” to “here.”

It moves us from anger, fear, and failure to peace, presence, and acceptance.

It’s the particle of light that brings us to a place of stillness, the touch of the divine, which transports us from the outer self to the inner in meditation.

Grace shows us we’ve been focusing on the wrong thing. That we’ve lost the bigger picture.

It lifts us out of ourselves to see what lies above the muck and mire we are stuck in, to see what is real and lasting.

To say it is Universal Law sounds stodgy. It calls forth images of stone tablets and judgment. The opposite is true. It is the gentlest golden light, the life force that holds all together.

Grace is not something undeserved. It is simply accepting the love of the Creator, which makes all things possible. It is the link that goes beyond hope to the reality of being. It is an anchor that holds us to this world while connected to the world of spirit. It is the golden thread that tells us one day we will be welcomed home.

Grace is the bridge that takes us there.

Whew, and with that, it’s time for a bit of tea and cake now, I think.