Poetry and praise take two

Sometimes the church can overuse the word, "Grace" ~ the unconditional and unceasing presence of God.  Or we can drop the word grace in the midst of a bunch of oughts and shoulds and coulds - which is a contradiction.  Or we turn grace into a carrot that if we are just good enough or volunteer enough or believe enough we might finally be able to earn...again the exact opposite of what grace is and does and prays for our life.  Grace is.

Grace moves with a wild abandon...
Grace interrupts and disrupts in the most delightful ways...
Grace dances
Grace laughs
Grace beckons us to see that joy is the fuel that feeds our life.

Yes...there is too much violence and we are too much in the world (especially when the world is at our fingertips twenty-four hours a day).  Yes...grace can be elusive and we can miss the traces in our life.  Yes, it certainly doesn't always come in the ways we wish or want. 

But grace will keep inviting us to travel another road.  The road as described in this poem by Mary Oliver.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Amen...and Amen.

Grace and peace ~~