Our theme for November is Grace as in the larger question: “What Does It Mean To Be a People of Grace?” The way I understand grace is central to my overall religious understanding. I may not know how to live as gracefully as I’d like, but I experience grace as present and real. Some of you may have the vague memory that we just talked about this. That’s because just last winter the March 16 service was “Grace-full Living. “ My service write-up: “The essence of my religious awareness began with the [profound and deep] experience of something more: a grace beyond me or more than my actions would seem to [have created] on their own.”
Grace is not a something that we ever just do. It’s a sense and presence that we live in and with, more or less gracefully. I know that for many of us, grace is a word that is a lot like faith, i.e. even if I am sharing a very different understanding than the one you grew up with, it may not an be an easy word to use. The First sentence in the Soul Matters small group materials packet begins to name our difficulties: “A people of grace”? It’s not a phrase we usually use to describe ourselves. Grace is the property of our good friends across the street at the Christian church. Grace is the theological concept we left behind. Or grew out of. Or were wounded by.” The list continues: “And don’t even get us started on the idea that we “need grace.” The paragraph concludes: “And so, for a long time now, many of us Unitarian Universalists have treated the idea of grace with benign neglect.”
I know too for some of us, anytime I begin to use the language of “something more,” we quickly move to the question of where does the something more come from? Rather than recognizing our experience and practicing notice and appreciation, we move into the not so very useful question of God or not God. Personally, I don’t travel far down that road. Neither does Unitarian Universalist theologian, Sharon Welch.
Hers are the words that inform my working understanding of grace: “Grace,” Welch writes, “is not the opposite of works; it is the gift of being loved and loving [we should pause right here before reading ahead] that enables work for justice. The connotations of grace are many and there are many that I want to affirm – grace is a power or an intensity of relationship that is more than we can predict or produce solely by our own volition. [something more?] This surplus connoted by grace – the deep joy of loving and being loved, the amazing changes possible in peoples lives – is sometimes interpreted as a gift from outside, grace being the gift of a force or person, grace as the gift of God or the Goddess. I would argue that grace is not [does not have to be made to be?] the manifestation of the divine in our lives, the gift of a separate or foundational being, but that grace is all there is or need be of the divine.” (from “A Feminist Ethic of Risk,” pp. 174-175)
Sometimes (most of the time?) life doesn’t feel graceful. It hasn’t been feeling that way for me lately. And yet sitting to remember and reflect on grace and the little surprises that break through helps me smile and feel a little more hopeful and resilient. It helps to be reminded of the power and presence of “The deep joy of loving and being loved.”
The Soul Matters packet for November does a good job of opening up the notion of grace and helping us explore our experiences. So maybe take five minutes and read the introduction. Maybe even go so far as to try one of the Spiritual Exercises like ”Take Up “Grace Watching” or “Give Grace a Hand.” Engage a question that “hooks” you and see where it leads you: maybe; “Have you closed yourself off from grace because you are uncomfortable with the word?” or “Do you consider yourself “graceful”? or consider one of the others.
With just a little effort you can bring grace into your November. A graceful November? That is definitely cause for Thanksgiving.
I hope it is a very Happy Thanksgiving.
—Jim McKinley, UUFH Minister