Living in a Sea of Grace

2022 August Blog Syndie Eardly ~ I spent two weeks traveling with my Grandchildren this summer. Over the course of that time, we watched the entire Harry Potter movie series. On our beach days, the kids often combed the sand dunes, looking for the perfect stick or reed to turn into a wand, and then ran around “abracadabra-ing” each other.

Having just read Gerald May’s book Addiction and Grace, I was musing as I watched them that we often tend to think of Grace as a kind sudden “zap” that hits us from time to time, or a magic potion that can change everything.

But I like to think that we are all floating in a sea of Grace, that God’s help, wisdom, and guidance are always around us if we could just come for air long enough to be aware of it. How we become aware of this offering moment to moment is really what spiritual practice is all about.

In Kevin O’Brien’s book on the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, he says “The grace we seek is indifference.” He doesn’t mean indifference in a callous way, but in the sense that we value everything that happens to us equally – with reverence and gratitude for the lessons it has to teach us, or the inspiration or insight it provides us as we work to fulfill our own personal mission here.

“Indifference is another way of describing spiritual freedom,” O’Brien writes. “It is a stance of openness to God: we look for God in any person, any situation, and any moment.”

That’s challenging for me because when life gets busy, it’s really difficult for me to see how that can possibly be a grace-filled situation. When life comes at me fast, I say, “The universe is clumping!” and I want to run in the other direction. But Gerald May would say, you’re right. You can’t do it on your own, but you don’t have to either.

When we face any challenging situation, whether it is an addiction, a disturbing life event, big demands at work, grief or loss, we need to let go of our desire to control the situation and let God into the situation, knowing God’s grace is completely surrounding us and in fact embedded in the situation itself.

So, we have to quit waiting to be zapped by grace or bailed out of our situation, as Harry Potter is always bailed out by some feat of magic.

In addiction recovery, they say you have to admit your helplessness and surrender to a higher power. Kevin O’Brien invites us to become “indifferent” to the situation and accept it all as equally reverent. It’s all a way of saying that we need to go with the flow, always bringing our awareness to the sea of grace that is keeping us afloat.