Daily Dose (Sept 26 – 29)

Tuesday —

This week, the gifts of Grace and Gratitude.
And it bears repeating, grace is not something you add to your life. Like a creedal quiz response, “I believe in grace.” Check.
Which is all well and good… however, grace happens when you let yourself—your messy, unfinished, incomplete—self be wrapped in the arms of grace. And hear the affirmation of the gift of enough.
In that embrace, there is, quite literally, an internal recalibration. While nothing is “added” to your life, there is a new awareness of the light that is (alive and well) within. Let’s call it our new internal wealth account.
So. Grace allows us to risk loving, to be unafraid of a life that can be messy.
To make a space for something less than perfect in ourselves and in one another.
To offer kindness and compassion. In a glance, in a word, in a touch.
To create spaces, sanctuaries, where healing and hope are offered.
To believe in goodness after harm. And to know that this light and love will always spill to the world around us.

So. Let’s go back to our gardening metaphor about dirt. Whatever you are hoping to grow, the dirt matters.
And grace is the dirt that grows and cultivates a spirit unafraid to risk loving and of living whole-hearted.
How? Because grace also grows (and imbues) courage. “I want to separate courage and bravery,” Brené Brown writes. “Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language, it’s from the Latin word cor, meaning heart, and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart… and wholehearted folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first, and then to others. Because as it turns out, we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly. And the last is, they had connection–this was the hard part–as a result of authenticity. They were willing to let go of who they thought they should be, in order to be who they were.”

Yes… Grace, the gift of befriending our own heart.

And as I write this, our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate Yom Kippur. Here is a prayer we can all take with us into our days…
To those I have wronged, I ask forgiveness.
To those I may have helped, I wish I had done more.
To those I neglected to help, I ask for understanding.
To those who helped me, I thank you with all my heart.
Shana Tova

Wednesday —

Grace allows us to risk loving, to be unafraid of a life that can be messy.
To make a space for something less than perfect in ourselves and in one another.
To offer kindness and compassion. In a glance, in a word, in a touch.
To create spaces, sanctuaries, where healing and hope are offered.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to just let that all settle in. But my mind has a strong suit in meandering, today spinning with ideas and thoughts for the daily dose Sabbath Moment.
Although, truth be told, my mind is often just spinning period… drawn and charmed by anything that makes me smile real big…
On my drive this morning to SeaTac airport, the rays of sunlight through the clouds onto the Puget Sound, and the panoply (theater) of leaf color (russet, claret, scarlet, butter yellow) along the way… Red Maple, Sugar Maple, Red-Osier Dogwood, Staghorn Sumac, Tulip-tree, Sweetgum and Katsura to name a few. Oh My. Grace and gratitude indeed.

And speaking of minds that flit and flitter… I received this poem from a reader…
The Prayer of the Butterfly.
Lord!
Where was I?
Oh, yes! This flower, this sun, thank you!
Your world is beautiful!
This scent of roses . . .
Where was I?
A drop of dew
rolls to sparkle in a lily’s heart.
I have to go . . .
Where? I do not know!
The wind has painted fancies
on my wings.
Fancies . . .
Where was I?
Oh, yes! Lord,
I had something to tell you.
Amen!
Sister Carmen Bernos de Gasztold

Yes. Sometimes we need to just let go of the need for tidy (or settled and uncluttered), and savor the awe and wonder in the Grace moments of the ordinary.

And tomorrow we’ll practice that… as I’ll be doing a retreat with some of the good people at Providence Medical in Santa Rosa, CA.

Thursday —

Today with a group of the good people at Providence Medical in Santa Rosa, CA. And we talked about the need to be emotionally hydrated, in a world that depletes us.
Put bluntly, the life-giving invitation of grace.
So. I had to tell the story of my Grandmother, and her porch swing.

My grandmother—Southern Baptist born and bred—didn’t cotton to folks in her church who played the judgmental-eternal-damnation-card just to feel good about themselves, or for the sake of proving a point.  She understood that in her church’s “theology,” there were many kinds of people “on the outside.” (Truth be told, in her church, “most” people were “on the outside.”) But my grandmother lived by an overriding imperative: “Anybody is welcome at my dinner table, no questions asked, no matter what.”
My grandmother understood the power of presence.
In the latter years of her life, in the back yard of her home in northern Florida, my grandmother had a porch swing. She liked to sit, and swing, and hum old church hymns, like Rock of Ages Cleft for Me. I can still see her there, wearing a white scarf over her head, a concession to chemotherapy’s unrelenting march. When I visited her, as a young adult, she would always ask me to sit with her on the swing, for a spell. She would pat my leg, and she called me “darlin’.”
As long as my grandmother lived—and in spite of her pain—there was always a place for me on the swing. If I were asked to explain Grace, I would paint the picture of my grandmother’s swing. There, I never had to deliberate or explain or worry regardless of the weight I carried. The swing—my grandmother’s presence—existed without conditions.
And I am here today, because of that swing.
I can hear the invitation of grace.
Grace allows us to risk loving, to be unafraid of a life that can be messy.
To make a space for something less than perfect in ourselves and in one another.
To offer kindness and compassion. In a glance, in a word, in a touch.
To create spaces, sanctuaries, where healing and hope are offered.

Friday —

As I write this, the house is in disarray. A stream of workers in and out, rebuilding a badly damaged patio (with the accompanying cacophony of noise). They know what they’re doing, but everything feels so up in the air and discombobulated (or maybe, it’s just out of “my” control).
Yes, many of us have had days (or weeks) like this. And for many, an injury or loss or emotional disarray, far more challenging than construction inconvenience.
One thing is certain: disarray too easily re-frames where we “look”. And sadly, we see only the “what’s left undone” parts.
So. This is a good segue to this week’s topic: grace and gratitude. Grace: even in the discombobulated and cluttered, we can find and be embraced by, the gift of enough, and the gift of sufficiency.
Lynne Twist’s reminder, “Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.” 

And I’m so grateful for the daily Pause+Pray (from my publisher Franciscan Media).
As James Finley at the Center for Action of Contemplation sometimes says, “You are being loved into existence.” This is an ever-present reality. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing—here, now—God is filling up your spirit, soul, and body with divine breath. The spiritual life is a matter of becoming aware of this ever-flowing love coursing through your being.

Prayer…
Grace, like mist in mountain air,
hangs in our midst each morning,
there to enjoy and experience,
to sense, to savor, to swim within.
As the fog fills the valley,
may we know we too
are being filled,
abundantly loved, fully accepted,
perpetually filled with divine breath.
Help me become more aware
as you, Yahweh, animate my being.

Whenever you begin to feel overwhelmed or disconnected today, pray a line or two from this prayer that resonated with you. Keep coming back to the reality that grace is all around you, that you are being perpetually filled up by God’s spirit, and that you are being “loved into existence,” now and always.
(Thank you Pause+Pray… and to that, I way, “Amen.”)

And tonight, the harvest moon will be at its fullest between tonight and tomorrow morning. Find it if you can…

Prayer for our week…
Blessed are you, autumn,
season of unavoidable endings.
You show us how letting go
can be a glorious, joyful practice
with your spectacular colours.
You model how to hold
paradoxes with grace –
the balance of living and dying,
relinquishing and receiving,
gathering and sharing.
You know that death is not
and ending, but a passage,
a transformation into new life.
May we learn these lessons well:
to celebrate with abandon
to practice reverence
to surrender completely
to embrace tenderly
to love without regret.
Wendy Janzen

Photo… “Hello Terry, I have attached several photos. These are dahlias that I grow in my garden. When everything else is winding down and dying in the fall, dahlias are at their best! They bring me so much pleasure and beauty. I live in New Albany, Indiana. I enjoy your Sabbath Moments, and I have several of your books. Thank you for being you,” Rose Koerber… Thank you Rose… And I’m so grateful for your photos, please send them to [email protected]

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