Will and Grace

 

Will – devoted practice

Grace – unmerited divine assistance

 

I have been thinking about the grace that supports me in my life and the will I must bring forth to support my own arising.  Grace is the unbidden, unmerited gifts from the universe.  Will is our courage to do, to bring forth what is in us out into the world.  Both are required for our fullest unfolding.

 

Grace has come through the strangers who provided shelter during my cross-country bike trip, the teacher whose encouragement filled me with purpose, the camp counselor who wrote me postcards filled with poetry and inspiration years after I spent a summer with her.  There were the jobs after months of unemployment when it seemed as if no doors would open, the people in the support groups who listened patiently and told their stories, the father who pushed me to do more than anyone in my family would have imagined appropriate for a girl.

 

More fundamentally, isn’t each inhalation and exhalation grace?  We come into the world naked, alone, and oh so fragile and are carried each step of the way with each inhalation and exhalation. That we are here at all is grace. The memory of seeing my daughter breathing for the first time will never leave me.  “Oh God, help me to care for her,” the prayer pulled out of my heart.

 

Even as the gift of life is given to us, we are also asked to make our way in the world, to stand up on our own two feet.  There is the necessary will to make manifest in the outer world what longs to be manifested through our praying, working, caring, artistry, our navigating loss, doubt, joy, and hope.  While through grace we are always supported by the seen and unseen “benefactors” – the air, the earth we walk upon and which feeds us, the rain, the angels – life also asks us to exert effort towards growth.  Each flower that blossom draws from the grace of the sun and also the will of extending the tiniest roots into the dark hard soil.  With our will we ask for what we deserve, speak up for ourselves, take risks, and get up again after we fall.  Will sometimes comes from the ego which longs for accolade, accomplishment, recognition.  This can get us started, up off of the couch to move us on the way.  But to persist over the long haul and toward spiritual growth and  contentment, we eventually need to sink taproot of will into the depths of the heart which only longs for its own unfolding. It is in this soil where our endeavors are deeply nourished as we tune into the grace that comes up to meet us in our unfolding.

  

Will and grace are like two long held friends who appreciate, support and love each other on the long journey.