Falling in love with grace

I love the elegance of a single word. A word that can capture a whole moment or experience in just one or two syllables.  I myself am very wordy- too wordy. For me it usually takes several sentences or even paragraphs to say or explain what others beautifully convey in just a few. Or sometimes, just one.

The first word I really truly fell in love with was "grace," which I define as meritless love. I first came to hear this word, which is really a concept right?, when I first began attending a Unitarian Universalist Church. The minister at the time used the word "grace" in her sermon.

Now, I should say here, I do not have a long religious history. In fact my upbringing was remarkably secular- not atheist or even agnostic, just void of god. To the point that I didn't even realize it was void of god until my early twenties. Religion and god were really non-issues, which in retrospect had its pros and cons. I certainly do not have a lot of the religious baggage or hang ups that my friends who grew up in say Catholicism have. But, on the other hand, I also had a void inside of me that I didn't even know was there and certainly had no language for.

Until I did. Until I began to be introduced through sermons and lectures and books and radio programs to these perfect words that encapsulated complex human experiences in the most satisfying way.

I was reminded of this early falling-in-love with spiritual and religious words this morning when I was reading a piece by Sue Monk Kidd.

I finally found Sue Monk Kidd's book "First Light" last weekend at my local libraries annual book fair fundraiser.  The book was squeezed between a bunch of other paperbacks in the "self help" section, which is kind of funny because "self help" is not the category I'd think of for this book, but there we are.

Most people know Sue Monk Kidd from her very famous book and then movie "The Secret Life of Bees-" by all means a fantastic book. But I actually was first introduced to her through her nonfiction spiritual memoir "When the Heart Waits."  Which is probably not a surprise if you read my blog because I  am fascinated by the art and crafting of a spiritual life.

But this other book, "First Light" is actually a collection of her earlier before-she-was-famous writing which she did, often for a magazine called "Guidepost" about the development of her spiritual life and relationship with god. Again, right up my alley.

The book itself is kind of like a quilting of her early writing. It is done in no particular order and patched together in an artful way by particular spiritual themes like: "silence," "simplicity" and the like.

This morning I read a story about her early days as a nurse watching a father demonstrate unconditional love and tenderness (another word I love!) to his 6 year old daughter who lay in a coma. Ms. Kidd remembers aloud through her writing the father saying to her the nurse "but I'll keep coming...because I love her whether or not she loves me back." Ms Kidd described the father's statement as "sublime love," I call it grace.

Ms Kidd's story brought me back to that sermon in my early UU days when I was introduced to the word and experience of "grace."  A concept so foreign to me I cannot even tell you. Meritless love?  Does such a thing truly exist? Love without contingency. Love without evidence, proof or explanation. Love not based on worth or accomplishment. To say that this concept was an absolute paradigm shift for me would be a drastic understatement.

I had said in a previous blog that it is quite difficult and quite rare for me to cry. Well, during that sermon, the tears began to fall. And I think that is because something inside of me already knew the truth of the minister's words. I just needed an elegant and simple word like "grace" to put a name to it.

Thank god for those words...I wanted to be sure my children had them from the very beginning. I didn't want them to have to wait like me. So my daughter, I must tell you now, is named Grace. May she always know and remember that love is not to be earned.  It is given freely and unconditionally forever more.

May you find your own sacred words today as well.