What Is Grace?

Oct. 22, 2010 — -- I am being followed. It started a month ago when I began doing public readings of my new memoir, "Reluctant Pilgrim: A Moody Somewhat Self-Indulgent Introvert's Search for Spiritual Community."

Everywhere I go I look into the crowd to find my stalker -- a question masked behind different faces but always shyly and defiantly rising to meet me again. "What is grace?"

I am moved by this persistent question among strangers of varying age, gender and ethnicity all longing to understand grace. Is it the forgiveness of sins by a merciful God? Is it something we can offer to others? The concept of grace befuddles us. I know what it is like to sit and squirm with both the simplicity and difficulty of possible answers. Grace -- a beautiful word, gentle sounding, a bit ethereal, a quiet force one could imagine floating through a room unassuming yet shifting everything in its wake. Grace. I have made it through years in Catholic and Protestant churches, received a master's degree in theology, and written a spiritual memoir. Yet I confess that when I think about defining grace few words encompass the depth and width of it.

It is hard to wrap our minds around grace, something offered freely and without merit. Grace doesn't make sense in a world where "we pay for what we get" and "we get what we deserve." The idea of grace can be an affront because grace does not seem to be a respecter of persons. Not everyone gets what they deserve. Not everyone pays the price. Grace stands there with open arms, an open table, an exposed heart, and seemingly bountiful bushels and bushels of hospitality, patience, and love.

I am not convinced we have to understand all grace means. The gift and the struggle is to receive it. It is a humbling thing to walk into the arms of grace because the very act of embracing it forces us to see the emptiness in our own hands and to name our own inadequacies.

The catechism of the Catholic Church says that grace is our God given ability to participate in God's life. God here understood as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That's nice and to the point, but actually I am more helped by lyrics from that U2 song conveniently called "Grace" that compares grace to a simple girl bearing creation on her, I assume, fertile life-giving hips.