There were years of grace, so much so, that I couldn’t imagine that walking in the world without this flow was possible anymore. Grace seemed to begin flooding into my moments when I walked out of my old life with my daughters in tow, and set out to make life from scratch. While those years of trying to make ends meet, burning my fuels to EMPTY most days, scrambling to meet needs while every next remained uncertain were so challenging, there was a background air of abundance, love, and support in the unseen forces that exist just behind a veil of the material. I was gifted guides and loves some steps ahead who cheered me on and reminded me of the larger view. Through all these years, I longed to create more certainty and stability in the seen world, but while the scramble was on, grace and trust seemed to ease the way and light the path. Grace period!
Fast forward to the wider expanse of today, with kids launched for the most part, and financial burdens eased a bit, I have become aware that identification with the smaller self has crept back – in hindsight – in small increments, so slowly as to be unnoticed. In the past month, I have been shown and I see the energetic dissonance that had taken hold. The other side of grace perhaps is the way reminders come in, incrementally as well, to say, “Hey, you! It is going to get stranger and more painful until you look up and see – you are back in Kansas again, playing out old stories. Wake up!” I have been getting grace’s kicks in the pants 🙂
Thank you grace, who knows how to take us and shake us for our own good. I think that when the space that I had sought for years finally arrived, the oldest wounds and defenses, that finally had room for examination, arrived center stage. People do all sorts of things at this point, it seems, to avoid sitting, listening, really looking truthfully at the deepest rooted identification with the small, hopeless self. Have a baby, get a dog, jump into an ill-conceived romance, begin a time-consuming hobby – everything called to me, well mostly, but at least not a baby! BUT what is on the table instead, if I am brave, is the uncomfortable re-boot of seeing, allowing space for clearing out old conditioning, patterns, protections, pretense. Grace gave me a taste of what’s possible, and slipping back gave me a whopping, and grace rolled up her sleeves to help me with the clean-out.
It strikes me that the most private and complex experiences that we have as humans occur with very few knowing anything about them at all. It isn’t pride or saving face, mostly, that keeps so much of the truest twists and turns of the human journey private. I think it is our inability to leave a trace at all of the subtlety of the way life goes down and grace arrives. Each tiny moment provides such voluminous information-feedback internally and externally-that writing, speaking, dancing, painting, singing- all our tools- do not have enough space for the real deal of every moment. Every story is watered-down and biased – and we can only reveal so much without yelling soliloquies from our cardboard houses in the alleys of main human thoroughfares to no one but rushers-by.
There can be no real bread crumb trail for how each soul goes from blindness and suffering to grace filled truthful awareness. The lightbulb goes off, the alarm, and the work ahead is clear. Grace enters. She fills the stage. There is no way to explain. Someone holds up a flower, another one smiles – and the transmission is complete, while someone else fumbles the ball and lets the whole team down, never able to explain what went wrong. Grace is here too, in the fumble and disgrace, from a later view, as it all plays out; failing was just right in order to see what was/is always real.
I assumed that when shifts occurred from the grace period on, conversations could be had. I assumed one could touch base, get feedback, check-in. But the mirrors are often perplexing when we are being guided to look at our blindspots, our conundrums, our hopeless-seeming patterns. Sometimes all we can reach is the heartbeat sound in our own ears from our own blood pumping and the gracious silence of distant, firm love.
It seems an important balance in the flow of grace that I learn again how to flip the switch on identification without any condemnation of the self that forgot. In an instant, the confusion can be seen and laughter is appropriate for the elephant wearing a tutu, crouched in the corner. The grace of self-love here is startling because it is watered with the salt of sorrow and purity of forgiveness. There is a certain inevitability, too, of the fall from grace. It was felt coming on for months, yet no strong-armed resistance could keep the shift away.
From here is remembered the years of largesse, in-and-outward love. The pathway is marked, the memory beckons from the future, and the stepless steps appear in the deepest stopping, listening, shoulders down, breathing into the forgotten furnace within; astounding how the consistent, loving, and distant sun burns within each of us unseen until we are ready, again. Grace, the final executioner bearing our last meal, whistling down dark corridors to our self-created cells. Freedom, a whiff of salty water in the distance, then suddenly a flood. Let’s get to the dance party again as we allow ourselves to be washed back into the ocean rave, going on all of our nights and days. We’ve got the wristband to enter already!
Life as Improv 