I have been thinking a lot about grace lately. By grace I'm not referring to poetic movement... But more that part of ourselves that gives extra chances. That sees the damage in all of us, the faultiness, but also sees the potential for great beauty amidst ugliness or unpleasantness, and sometimes because of it.

A friend of mine once described the most incredible thing about her relationship with her husband. She said, "We heal each other every day." And as soppy as that sounds, to me this is grace: this sort of loving that knows the worst but loves anyway.

I need lots of grace from everyone who knows me. I hope I give as good as I get.

I am sometimes scattered and selfish and bold and assuming and emotional and too blunt and hiding and distracted and loud and bawdy and shy and afraid and truly angry about nothing and everything and sometimes, I am just awful.

But I also love deeply and am creative and empathetic and productive and occasionally even nurturing and I laugh easily and truly delight in the people I know since they are all beautiful in indescribable and extremely individual ways and sometimes, I am OK, and I even love myself a little. (Don't worry, I'm not breaking into some awful song at this point... bear with me.)

I just think that we all have these things in us that make us react in ways that sometimes bruise each other or even maim more seriously, that we are sometimes not doing the best we can, but we're doing that crazy dance of forgetfulness or holding it together or being purely selfish or disappointed... Our worst selves are sometimes there and embarrassing and much louder than our best selves.

And we see this worst self in others too and see them doing stupid things and saying stupid things... but that we need to have grace for those moments. And that isn't to say that we let people abuse us or take unkindness... but that we weigh it all out. And when we find that seed of empathy that grows to grace, to express it as sincerely and honestly and with as much healing as we can possibly provide. And other times we defend ourselves without being cruel, because that is just unnecessary.

Because sometimes, the ugliness isn't about the recipient. Sometimes, it's just wounds on display. I think that grace is a beautiful thing.

How this all fits into the big scheme of things, I have no idea. It's just what I was thinking about today. Thanks for listening to the babble.

Labels: being alive, beliefs, grace, interpreting and reinterpreting, moments, the soppiest blog entry *ever*

When I was 21 I learned the joy of dancing.

I grew up in a debate. My mother a fervent evangelical Christian, my father an agnostic, the conflict was inevitable. Both with strong convictions about the morality and beliefs that children should be raised with.

For the early part of my life, I bought into the Christian view point and attended church with a serious commitment. It is difficult to reinterpret the past, so I am reticent to judge or ponder the reasons for my most sincere belief, but it was most certainly there.

Either the church’s fault or my own, I had an intensely dualistic view of the world, of right and wrong, based on very simple and unquestioning faith. To an extent, I even think that I “rebelled” against my father through my faithful attendance to a youth group. In retrospect, I would say that mostly good things came out of it, since it was lead by really loving people and I had really good friends, and as a geeky awkward kid, I belonged. And there are worse things to carry into life than valuing “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and faithfulness.”

One of the many misguided notions I appropriated was regarding “them and us”, that being those with faith and those with different faith or no faith at all. I judged others based on ridiculous criteria. I also believed that it was always wrong to dance and that certain locations were “dens of iniquity” simply on the basis of their supposed godlessness.

When I began university, and specifically a philosophy class, I began to see that much of my supposed belief was based more on the fear of the consequences of disbelief (namely hell). And that a lot of the ways in which the Bible was interpreted had little to do with actual words or document itself, and more on church culture and dogma. This included things like dancing. In addition, I met people, wonderful people, who did not share my beliefs, who were loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, and faithful. And they expressed these things in more creative ways that I ever had. Over time, I could no longer accept a faith that was based on a god who would summarily condemn people to hell because they weren’t “saved.” I still can’t.

I’ve heard the whole argument that Christianity is about reconciliation with god rather than condemnation, but the results are the same: it entails believing that an all-knowing all-powerful god set all of this in motion including “the fall from grace” and all of the resulting pain in the world , etc. It means that god chose it.

I lost my faith. It was gradual and it is still complicated. And I felt tremendously relieved instead of the torture of the soul I expected. And I went dancing with friends, and felt a release in my soul and it was fun and not the evil I thought it would be. And I still see grace in the world, and tremendous compassion and love amidst equal horrors.

And I still don’t really know what I believe about god , the wonder of nature and the universe, small joys, tremendously harsh actions and cruelty, creativity and expression, heartbreak and delight, colour, sound, light, peace, anger... It is such a confusing combination where awful things give birth to beauty and vice versa. And I embrace the diversity of our experience and the things that have absolutely nothing with the way we (humans) interpret them. . . because it gives them more meaning than they may have.

But still I dance in awe of it.

Labels: beliefs, interpreting and reinterpreting, non-resolution