The Marks of Grace: A Top Five
January 29, 2020

    Top Five, Top 10, Top 25 lists – they're all the rage these days.  Here‛s the kind of thing that shows up in my social media feed: "Top Five Must-Have Cast Iron Cookware Pieces"; "Top Ten Places to Hike with Your Kids"; "Five Reasons Why You Need Goats on Your Small Farm"; "Top 25 Plants to Attract Pollinators".  The algorithms have me pegged.  

    So I'll get in on the game, with a Top Five list of my own: "Top Five Qualities of a Grace-Filled Life" . . . . or something like that.  Here's how you spot someone who has internalized grace, or the clues that you're catching the bug yourself:

    1.  Humility.  We've already discussed the first two of these, but they're worth revisiting.  Humility is the only response commensurate with the understanding that the good things in your life – or, at least the conditions that give rise to those good things, and your life itself -- are, at bottom, free gifts of the universe and not the result of your efforts.  If you look at people less fortunate than you, and your response is anything other than, "There, but for the grace of God, go I" (or a secular equivalent), then you have not yet acquainted yourself with the humility that existence demands of you.

    Of course, a proper humility is not inconsistent with being a Bad Ass Ninja Warrior – at least to the extent that you use your bad-assery to combat the very real malevolence, the evil,  that is afoot in the world (including in yourself).  In other words, let us not confuse humility with cowardice.  See Number 5 below.  In fact, cowardice is a sure sign of a person's failure to realize that their power comes from a greater source than themselves.  So practice your bad-ass arts – the world needs you to do so – but do it from a place of humility.

    2.   Gratitude.  The second mark of grace is closely linked to the first.  When you realize that your gifts are ultimately just that – gifts – the only logical response is to give thanks.  And when you realize how utterly thorough-going the gifts really are, then thanksgiving should become so constant, such a habitual practice, that it constitutes your modus operandi.  Is your heart beating?  Give thanks.  Did you just take a breath?  Give thanks.  Give thanks in all things – literally – until you keel.  A person who has understood grace is a thankful person, and that gratitude opens the door of generosity by which more grace flows into the world.  So be grateful.

    3.  Curiosity.  There is far more to say about this one than can be said today, but let me start here: cultivating an attitude of humble thanksgiving – i.e., internalizing the first two marks of grace – should foster in you a desire to know more about the world.  This desire should encompass both the world within you (your own desires, fears, aspirations, moral capacities, etc.) and the world around you (your family, neighbors, community, the planet, the solar system, etc.).  Curiosity begins with making yourself susceptible to awe and it grows into an adventure, or many of them.  Start with what makes your brain light up or sets your heart on fire and follow it in all its details as far as it takes you.  One path may take you a lifetime, so start now.

    And know this: a person who is not curious – who closes themselves off from new information, acting as if they already know everything they need to know to make their way in the world – is a person unacquainted with grace.  Mark it.

    4.  Tenacity.  A person whose life has been marked by grace is persistent, dogged, tenacious, unflagging in the pursuit of a grace-filled life.  They do not give up.  The going is and will be hard – really hard – but there's no substitute for the slog, the trudge, the plod, the slow march.  Keep going.  Keep swimming.

    5.  Courage.  This is where we circle back to the Bad Ass Ninja Warrior part again. In a universe subject to the law of entropy, it takes tremendous work – and thus tremendous energy – just to maintain order, let alone create more of it.  It is very nearly miraculous, if not entirely so,  that any order exists in the world at all, given how easy it is to just let things slide.  And if we let things slide long enough – even if we just miss the mark by a little, but we do it over and over and over again – we find ourselves in the grip of evil.  It is not the disorder itself that is evil, but the failure to address or transform it – or worse, the tendency to affirmatively multiply or exploit it in a way that may benefit a few (in the short run) but increases the suffering of many.  

    So we need people to take on this evil, to combat it, resist it, stare it down.  The people capable of doing this are humble, grateful, curious, and tenacious.  They also know how to tap the wellspring of courage necessary for the effort.  It is not that they are fearless – courage is not the absence of fear.  It is rather that, by grace, they have summoned the ability to act in spite of the fear.

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    May we seek to live lives that bear these marks of grace.