I Need More Grace than I Thought
And isn’t this very often the case?
The line in the title from the Rumi (Coleman Barks translation) has been popping into my head a lot lately. In context it goes:
“Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.
Love moves away.
The light changes.
I need more grace
than I thought.
But recognizing that you need more grace is at least something. Are there more of them than us? At the beginning of this whole shitshow I listened to Jason Isbell’s “Hope is the High Road” a fair bit.
I really believed those pre-pandemic lyrics. “There can’t be more of them than us.” I believed in the high road. I’m not so sure any more. Though for sure Jason Isbell is one of the beacons of light in this world.
But okay, what can be done? Personally, I can’t wait until Karen Walrond’s new book comes out, titled “The Lightmaker's Manifesto,” described on her site as a book which: “helps us name the skills, values, and actions that bring us joy; identify the causes that spark our empathy and concern; and then put it all together to change the world.” As well: “By unearthing our passions and gifts, we learn how to joyfully advocate for justice, peace, and liberation. We learn how to become makers of light.”
In the meantime, I’m returning to Krista Tippet’s Becoming Wise. One section that popped out for me today goes like this:
“Spirituality doesn’t look like sitting down and meditating. Spirituality looks like folding the towels in a sweet way and talking kindly to the people in the family even though you’ve had a long day.”
So I guess I’m a bit of a believer in the church of folding towels. (Of course as the recipient of kind attentions, I’m going to be biased). Folding the towels with sweetness won’t change the world maybe, but as the saying goes, it might change yours.
I don’t know what your bandwidth is these days, so to speak. I know that mine has fluctuated more wildly than it ever has. And then, we all live in various parts of the world, and that changes a lot. Where I am, though, things are really not cool, and getting worse.
But I’ve been thinking about my strategy in my garden. Which is to plant enough flowers so that no one notices the weeds. And in my house, we put up enough art that when someone comes over with some luck they don’t notice the dust. (Easier to do when you’re married to an artist of course). I’m tired and I sure as hell am not sleeping well. But. I think I can plant some bloody flowers.
I don’t know how to get my grace on these days. So I won’t presume to tell anyone how to do…well…pretty much anything. We are seriously making stuff up as we go along, to try and make this world less “OOF” and more filled with light, as Karen Walrond would encourage.
But what if we all just started planting a LOT of flowers, metaphorically speaking? What if we filled up our metaphorical walls with ART? And then, as we gain our energy and momentum, those flowers might just become flowers that advocate, again in the words of KW, for justice and peace. We could all use some of that, too, bouquets of justice, peace, light.
September 6, 2021
