By Khalila RedBird Post date March 12, 2016
Grace. It’s one of those words beloved by Christians, but one I haven’t heard much in other contexts. Maybe it is spoken of, but under other names. I would like to unravel the meaning here, in accessible language across the barriers of religious context.
To start, I’ll narrow the scope from cosmic to community and personal; from God to collective and interconnected humanity. And I will make three critical assumptions.
First assumption: there is more to reality than that which is Seen and is accessible to repeatable observation, measurement, and examination, including such matters as love, compassion, hatred, sentiment, fear, principle, and other denizens of the unSeen-but-not-unreal. Life would be much less than it is, were this not the case.
Second assumption: overall, these human-generated bits of All That Is tend to the good and beneficial more than to the opposite. We would not have survived this long if the overall trends went the other way.
Third assumption: all the bits of All That Is are connected directly or indirectly to one another and often multiply so. Complete isolation is an ideal for experimental settings but then fails to allow for observation.
Already, a source of goodness is clear: that tendency to the good accumulates. Grace grows, amorphous and untethered, from the total of human actions.
Grace comes to us without our control, without our earning or deserving it, and without a clear trail of cause and effect. Even if we take it for granted, we still receive it, our suffering is reduced, and our ability to contribute to the accumulation of goodness is increased. If we recognize it and accept it, we may be a bit more intentional about acknowledging it and passing it along.
In his eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, President Obama spoke eloquently of God’s grace and was understood in that Christian context. But it not necessary to hold to his understanding of God to recognize grace. We can look to each other and honor the contributions each of us makes to that amorphous and untethered accumulation of goodness in our world. And, without requiring a documented trail to a source or cause, we can recognize and accept the grace that falls to us unearned.
Amazing, isn’t it?
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