Living in Grace

Presented to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington

April 29, 2007

Rev. Paul Ratzlaff

As many of you know, at the end of February I had a car accident.  This was the bright sunny day that followed the late February snow storm.  I was uninjured but my car was totaled.  Heading east on Jericho Turnpike, I came over the hill just before the intersection with Warner Road.  I saw water across the entire highway – snowmelt that wasn’t draining properly.  I slowed a little, but assumed that I would pass through it, like the other cars ahead of me.  Instead, I hydroplaned and lost control, as if I were on a sheet of ice.  With nothing to do but hope that I would get traction and come out of the slide, I noticed the stanchion holding the Warner Road traffic lights directly in my path.  “This could be it,” is the thought that raced through my mind.  But somehow I missed the stanchion, and ended up sliding into the ditch, with its brush that slowed me down enough to keep my air bags from deploying and slamming into my face and chest.  I turned off the motor, lowered my window to assure the people who had stopped right away that I was not hurt.  I called 911 on my cell phone.  Then I forced the door open and walked back to the side of the road.

Only later did I notice the medium-sized trees that I had missed.  I noticed the road-side “No standing” sign that I had sheared off.  The tow truck driver knew the spot.  He told me that most of the cars he had pulled out of the ditch there had flipped over.  Not desirable in a convertible!  But my car stayed upright.

As I began to reflect on the experience, I thought, “I am one extraordinarily lucky fellow!  This could have been catastrophic, but I’m not hurt – the rest is just inconvenience and money.”

Others would point to something other than luck.  They would say, “Paul, I guess God didn’t need to take you just yet.  He (that’s how they would refer to him) must have some other plans for you.”  Others might speak of a guardian angel.  Others might say, “Paul, it’s a miracle that you are alive and uninjured.”  Yet others might speak of the moment as a moment of “grace.”

That’s one understanding of “grace.”  It refers to those experiences that appear to be miracles in our lives.  Moments when catastrophe was missed by a cat’s whisker.

I’m enough of a skeptic that I don’t believe life works that way.  I don’t believe there’s some divine force that manipulates events so that some live and some die.  I don’t believe that God re-directed my car so that it missed the stanchion, missed the tree trunks and stayed upright, even though natural forces were ready to flip it.

But I do believe in “grace.”  Obviously I mean something different by the word “grace” as I use it from the way so many others use the word.

“Grace” for me is the awareness that others give me my life.  My being is not self-sufficient but depends on others – people and things.  Grace is another way of describing what it feels like to live our seventh principle.  It’s the awe, the gratitude, the delight we feel in our bodies when we experience profoundly the interdependent web of which we are a part.

In this sense every moment is a moment of grace, because every moment that we live depends on forces beyond ourselves, as elemental as sun and air and water, and as complicated as human community.  Every moment is a miracle, a moment of grace, when we pay attention.

With Walt Whitman we can say, “to me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle./Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.”  Whitman praised the grass, under our feet, in his extended paean, “Leaves of Grass.”  Emerson, too, queried, why do we get so hung up on the so-called miracles recorded in the Christian Gospels, when all about us are the miracles of fields of clover.

How do we live our seventh principle?  Partly it’s a matter as we said last Sunday of paying attention to the consequences of our choices on the environment.  But today I want to emphasize simply paying attention to the amazing system of life that gives us life moment to moment – to what I would call “living in grace.”

That “accident” in late February was filled with grace, had I eyes to see and ears to hear.  There was the grace of the other passers-by who stopped to offer help.  Consider the events in their lives that led them to pull over for a stranger in distress.  Had they heard the story of the Good Samaritan as a child or the reflection of generosity of Maimonides?  What led some to stop while others rushed ahead?  How about the woman who announced that she was an “EMT”?  What had led her to pursue the training to provide emergency medical treatment?  Consider the institution that provides training for EMTs – the accumulated knowledge and commitment represented in that label.

I could go on and on to consider the history and wealth of factors that led to the first responder, the Suffolk County Police Officer, the tow truck driver, the insurance rep., the car rental agency – all the way to the sun and snow and the food I had eaten for breakfast.  When we stop to consider, isn’t it amazing all the factors that came into play in that one experience!  As we said to Mackenzie DeRosa earlier, “Each of us is at the center of an interdependent web beyond our comprehension.  The love that holds us is immense.   Paul Ratzlaff (put in your own name) you too are held in this love.”

But we forget this all the time.  We get so caught up in our pursuits, our busyness that we lose sight of all that sustains us moment to moment.  Sometimes an accident shakes us out of our stupor, and we remember how precious and full is the life that carries us every second of our lives.

Some of us live with a narrow sense of entitlement.  We think everything exists to meet our needs.  And when the world obliges, we take it for granted.  Of course, our narcissistic self scoffs.  But others of us live with a broad sense of gratitude in which we see almost everything as a gift, which we have the pleasure to enjoy.  That is what I would call “living in grace.”  The latter is the fruit of spiritual maturity. 

A few of us are born “living in grace,” but most of us need to be intentional about developing this awareness.  That’s why many of us develop a spiritual practice.  There are many choices, be it meditation, yoga, walking, coloring mandalas, gardening, devotional reading, journaling, gathering to worship each week, and so on.  We use the practice to slow us down so that we can remember how gifted our lives are.  Again and again we re-enter that larger perspective that reminds us that our tiny lives are held and carried, as if, in the image of the Irish blessing, we are held in God’s hand.  And the reason it’s sometimes called spiritual “discipline” is because we keep doing it even in those inevitable moments in our lives when we lose our way, when we feel ourselves deserted, when we suffer from absence in our souls.  It’s the practice, the path, that supports us even through these times of doubt and loss.  It’s the discipline that brings us round right, as the song “Simple Gifts” reminds us.  With intention and good friends we find our way through to live in grace again.

I don’t believe in a God who intervenes to make my car miss the stanchion while allowing another car to slide across the road into oncoming traffic and wipe out a family of innocents heading the other direction.  But I am open to an understanding of “God” as a way of talking about the incredibly complex web of loving relationships that keeps each of us alive.  Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of “inter-being.”  Many of you are familiar with his example, when you look deeply into a piece of paper, you see the sun, the rain, the earth, because all of these elements were required to grow the tree that became pulp from which this paper is made.  Looking deeper even still you see the universe, the big bang, for what was necessary for there to be a sun, an earth – and you see all the human factors, the tree farmer, the log truck driver, the pulp mill, the sales distribution network, even Staples.  As Thich Nhat Hanh might say, you see that everything, including you, inter-is.  Nothing is separate, independent.  Everything has its being in this vast web which is love, which is sacred, which is one way to conceive of God.

Spiritual practice deepens our awareness so that we live more of our lives in grace.  As the Brussats write in Spiritual Literacy “We come to realize that daily life is a theater of grace with continuous performances.  The sacred is here and there and everywhere.  Suddenly our lives take on a special radiance from within.” (183)

As I close I want to share one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s poems, called “The Good News.”

The good news

they do not print.

The good news

we do print.

We have a special edition every moment,

and we need you to read it.

The good news is that you are alive,

that the linden tree is still there,

standing firm in the harsh Winter.

The good news is that you have wonderful eyes

to touch the blue sky.

The good news is that your child is there before you,

and your arms are available:

hugging is possible.

They only print what is wrong.

Look at each of our special editions.

We always offer the things that are not wrong.

We want you to benefit from them

and help protect them.

The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,

smiling its wondrous smile,

singing the song of eternity.

Listen! You have ears that can hear it.

Bow your head.

Listen to it.

Leave behind the world of sorrow

and preoccupation

and get free.

The latest good news

is that you can do it.

- in Call Me by My True Names

The “latest good news” is that we can live in grace.  May it be so.

I pray for us today: May we discern what truly matters in our lives.  May we prune away the clutter and distraction that clouds our vision.  May we hear the call to deeper purpose, and free ourselves from noisy clamoring.  May we feel the embrace of the web of grace that gives us life.  May we be ever aware and grateful for this immense love which sustains this incredible gift of life which is ours to enjoy.  Praises be!  Amen.