What is G R A C E to you?

Dear Friends,

What is grace to you?

In today's (Day-4) meditation of manifesting grace, Oprah and Deepak described grace beautifully.  Oprah said, "Grace is replying; grace response."  Deepak said, "Grace is like the rain that falls on everyone alike." How true!  Thank you, Oprah and Deepak for sharing with us your wisdom.

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When I begin to write this post, tenderness fills my heart as I recall some of the grace in my life.

In The Grace of God, what a grace it was that my excruciating four days and nights painful ordeal happened right after we brought our older son home from the university.  My husband, who spoke little English, would not have been able to handle the business without our son's help.  With little money and no health insurance, I could only pray for healing.  What a grace it was I 'got' a date while I prayed.  Though I was a little bit off on my understanding of the date (see my post), this grace certainly helped me to hold on despite of the unbearable pain.

In The Grace of Good Intention, I found out I could not use my new camera on an important day.  I thought I would not have any picture of that day.  When the day was over, a woman came to me.  She told me she had taken pictures of me during the event.  It was her way of thanking me for a simple goodwill trip I made some nights ago.  Her grace (or the Grace of God) brought tears to my eyes.

In Let us start from ground zero, the brother, after listening to my explanation about the misunderstanding between his wife and me, said 'let us start from ground zero'. At the end of the post, I wrote 'Let us give ourselves and others the grace as the brother has given me'.  Indeed, we can be the grace in each other's life if we choose to turn a new page with love and acceptance in time of conflict / misunderstanding.

Now, let me share with you an incident that happened years ago.

On June 15, 2007, Friday, I went to the Center at night to participate in the New Moon Ceremony.  At the end of the ceremony, we formed a circle by putting the left hand on the right shoulder of the one standing next to us.  We put our right hands forward to send out healing energies to the whole world.  Our eyes were closed.  The facilitator said a short prayer.  Then she asked if anybody wanted to say something.  In our previous gatherings, people joined in one after another to say a prayer of healing or something that concerned them (or their loved ones).  Strangely, this time there was complete silence.  Meanwhile, I kept hearing these words -

                                 The Grace of God is the Grace of Love
                                   The Grace of Love is the Grace of All

My intellectual mind refused to say the words because I thought they were irrelevant for the gathering.  For quite a while, we stayed in this strange silence, yet the facilitator did not close the circle.

(While writing this post, the human I wondered if the last part of Grace should be "the Grace of Love is the Grace for All" instead of "of All"  I decided to stick with what I had written down on that day.  All Is Well.)

The words sounded over and over in my mind.  Finally, I said in my heart, "Okay, I am going to say it!"  I summed up my courage.  I took a deep breath and opened my mouth.  I said "The Grace of God".  Immediately, I stopped because I was startled by my own voice.  It was loud!  I opened my eyes.  Everybody was startled by my out-of-nowhere loud voice.  Their eyes were wide opened.  Their left hands no longer on others shoulders.  Their right hands suspended in the air.  The expressions on their shocking faces were so hilarious (sorry, my brothers and sisters), I started laughing and laughing.  Since laughing was contagious, others began to laugh uncontrollably. Some were laughing so hard that they bent down holding their stomach.  For quite some minutes, all of us laughed.  It took a while before we got a hold of ourselves, and I got to finish what I had to say.

   The Grace of God is the Grace of Love; the Grace of Love is the Grace of All.

My friends, what is grace to you?

If you will, please take some time to think about the grace in your life after you finish reading my post.  As we acknowledge the grace in our life with gratitude, we open ourselves up to more wonderful experiences of the Loving Divine.

By the way, I hope you have a good laugh too.

Love,
Q of D