There is grace there.
I'm sitting and writing this in, of all places, a downtown Nashville bar. It's eleven o'clock on a Saturday night and I'm surrounded by drunk people, questionable smells, screaming bachelorette parties, and spilled beer. The thought runs through my head like an elite marathoner: "I can't write about grace here." I almost throw in the towel, and then I take a look around. A blonde woman sporting a bride-to-be sash stops in front of a couple. She's hoisting a styrofoam globe full of tootsie pops that says, "Suck for a Buck." The man of the couple produces a dollar, and three girls with "Bride Tribe" koozies walk up to snap a picture. If grace is what tethers us to God (albeit tenuously, at times), then grace is surely here. And if grace doesn't flow tenfold here, then grace surely doesn't exist. So here I am, watching my boyfriend play a late shift, nursing a light beer (28 carbs! 99 calories!), and writing about grace.
What is grace? I had an outline for this post, but I think I'm going to throw it out and roll with what's happening around me. That couple that bought the sucker? She's gorgeous. Wavy, blonde hair, sparkling brown eyes, wearing a flowing red and white floral jumpsuit with white high heels and perfectly pedicured toes peeking out. She’s having the time of her life, smiling (with perfect teeth), and dancing, while he watches. He's not the dancing type, but if he has any theology, it's a theology of joy at seeing his wife so happy. She's got a huge diamond ring, but it's not just for show. She's madly in love. Whether they've been married for two years or twenty, when he pulls her in for a kiss she closes her eyes and there's that electric air around them, briefly. The kind you can't fake. There's grace there.
Phones are lighting up a lot of faces. There's a lot to say for technology dis-membering us from our present moment, but the way one of the "Bride Tribe" girls smiles suggests that the light on her face is connecting her to someone she loves, someone who isn't physically present but clearly present in her heart. There's grace there. It radiates.
The audience shout-sings "Livin’ On A Prayer" in a tonality that doesn't exist in any musical tradition, and it's clear they mean it. There's grace there.
A member of the "Bride Squad" (not to be confused with the "Bride Tribe") slips on the spilled beer and lands very squarely in the center of her Squad circle. Her friends pick her up and there is grace in their laughter.
You might think that I’m broken/
But I’m finding grace.
When I wrote this line from my song, “Throw Down My Heart,” I wasn't really thinking about God. I was at the end of the grueling experience I talked about in the last meditation. I sought refuge in a solo trip to northwestern Wisconsin, where I devoured the fresh air, sank my feet into the sanctuary of snow that the northern winters provide, and wrote what would become the title track to my first solo EP. I didn’t know exactly what I meant, but I knew I was seeking something deep - something that Peter Rollins calls the “technology of theology,” and that Paul Tillich describes as “the acceptance that you’re accepted”. If pressed to define grace myself, I would say it's the divinity of reality that is always with us, through sickness and health, through blue-sky mountaintop sunrises and even through late nights in dirty bars.
The best part for me about the journey to finding grace has been the fact that there’s no finish line. The work of grace is never over. It’s not something you can measure or log with an app or gather in your ego’s bouquet via social media “likes”. Grace is what’s constantly calling us to find our “inner demons,” those habits that aren’t serving us, and exorcise them. And it’s only accessible when you really do the work, when you are truly willing to live with an open heart (and indeed, sometimes a broken-open heart). When I keep my heart open, which I’ve found to be one of the hardest human tasks, I always discover something deeper and purer and more transformational than I ever expect to find. Quite often, I find that grace shimmers in the most unexpected places.
There's grace in the seven-inch heels and the calves that will hurt tomorrow. There's grace in the matching cowboy hats and the matching bridesmaids cocktail dresses. And if all this sounds far-fetched, I promise I'm not drunk. I think this is perhaps one of the very best places to write about grace. To quote Anne Lamott*: “I do not understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
***
*If you’re not familiar with Anne Lamott, I highly recommend dropping whatever you’re doing and picking up a copy of “Bird By Bird.” You. Will. Not. Regret it.
End note: At one point, there's a guy standing to my right, alternating between texting a friend and throwing up into a trash can. He grabs a napkin from the bar, blows his nose several times, and then orders another drink. He heads back out to the dance floor with gusto. I guess you could say the grace is the fact that there's a trash can there.
small flowers, yellow napkins
...perhaps there is so much unreconciled pain in our individual bodies that most of us can’t even begin to process pain on the societal level – the pain in other bodies – that we are confronted with today.
Lately, I’ve been eating breakfast on my grandparents’ china. It seems like a reasonable thing to do in these times, considering that every day’s news is another point for the Rapture and my most recent TJ-Maxx haul included a salt lamp and an adult coloring book. (Those coloring books, by the way – totally worth the hype.)
My grandparents’ china has a simple design: white with small, pink flowers, and gold around the edges. It doesn’t all fit in my kitchen cabinets, so there are some plates and bowls stacked on the counter in the corner. My grandmother, when she was alive, tucked soft yellow napkins in between each plate and bowl to keep them from scratching each other. After she died in 2011, I carefully packed the various pieces into boxes, complete with the original paperwork folded into a teacup, and drove them back to Nashville from Lexington, Kentucky. They sat diligently in my first apartment’s cabinets for nearly six years before I moved earlier this summer, when I decided to start using them.
I think about my grandparents often. The china I wake up with belonged to my dad’s parents, Bob and Rita. To me, they represent resilience and steadfast love. Grandmother Rita lived in a drafty upstate New York barn during the Great Depression, graduating from high school in 1933 and meeting Grandpa when they were graduate students in political science at Syracuse University. My grandfather went on to become a journalist for Associated Press in New York City. They were married for 63 years before my grandpa died in 2006. The tattoo on my left wrist is the word “beautiful” in my grandfather’s script, excerpted from a letter he wrote to my grandmother when he was away on business. The full line reads, “I still remember walking down 5th avenue to meet you for lunch. You were beautiful then and you are even more beautiful now.” The ink is a reminder to embody that kind of love in my relationships.
On my mom’s side, I never met my granddaddy, but he stands for intellect. He was a vociferous reader in not only English, but Greek and Latin. He was a philosopher, a teacher, a superintendent, and a nurseryman. He was a Republican, a Baptist, and the descendant of abolitionist Tennesseans who fought for the Union in the Civil War. He married a woman named Lucille, who died of stomach cancer when my mom was five. After Lucille’s death, his old high school flame became my mom’s stepmom and the grandmother whom I knew. Cornelia was her name. She stands for poised brazenness. She was a Democrat, a wholehearted member of the Church of Christ, and regularly reminded my parents and myself that we needed to find a church ASAP and start repenting because she “just couldn’t bear” the thought of us burning in hell. She poured a couple tablespoons of salt onto everything she ate (often fried chicken) and into everything she drank (usually buttermilk) and lived to just over 100 years old.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about intergenerational memory, and the emerging research about how we can inherit trauma that we never experienced ourselves. It’s an incredible reminder of how we literally carry our pasts with us in our bodies, every day. It seems a stretch to think that something my great-great-grandmother experienced could be affecting the way I carry my own weight through the world, but science backs it up.
Which makes me wonder: is it so hard to ponder that we’re wrestling with how best to live with one another, when we haven’t learned how to best reconcile the struggles from the past that are present in our own bodies? It’s easy to get impatient with external progress, but can we expect to change deeply entrenched societal structures when the person in the mirror might have a genetically-influenced tendency to rely too heavily on the sympathetic nervous system – the one that prescribes flight, fight, or freeze over calm, rational logic?
What would it look like if we could map out our individual senses of inherited trauma, and would those maps look anything like the deep lines that cut us into such polarized groups today? In this divided time, perhaps there is so much unreconciled pain in our individual bodies that most of us can’t even begin to process pain on the societal level – the pain in other bodies – that we are confronted with today.
I’ll never know exactly what I’ve inherited from my ancestors, but I’m getting better at recognizing the signs of being on the verge of not acting from my best self and instead acting from my pain: my mind wanders where I’m usually present; I start being overly critical with myself and others; and I start getting irrationally angry at being stuck in traffic. I’m not perfect at catching myself, but when I do, I know it’s time to turn inward, find what’s not working, and open up about how I’m feeling. Can you imagine if we did that on a grand scale? What if we could stop our conversations before we get lost to fight or flight?
My conscious memories of my grandparents speak to their strengths: resilience, steadfast love, intellect, poised brazenness. I’ve try to fold those qualities into my life as a way to help heal whatever trauma I’ve inherited. When I get knocked down, I’ve got my grandmother’s resilience. When I start shutting down emotionally, I remind myself of my grandpa’s steadfast love. My grandaddy’s intellect is inspiration to stay curious and be a forever student, and my grandma’s esprit de corps reminds me not to apologize so damn much, and to prioritize my spiritual needs as much as my other needs.
These are strange times, but I’m finding strength in my past. I don't know if the data exists yet as to whether you can inherit traits like resilience and steadfastness, but there’s certainly no harm in practicing those values as if they are already inherent in my body.
That’s the real reason I’m eating breakfast on china plates: not because Rapture is nigh, but because the simple, small flowers are a reminder to find strength and beauty in the smallest moments. The gold edges shine as a reminder to carry my past into my future in a way that heals. And the yellow napkins, folded by my grandmother’s hands, are a reminder to stay soft and openhearted when I’m close to others, who I might otherwise jump to judge by their hardened, weathered outside.
six ways to celebrate spring
Spring, indeed, always comes.
When I was growing up, there was a popular phrase teachers proselytized, usually at end-of-the-year assemblies no one really wanted to be at: “Don’t ever change.” I never understood this particular call to action. For the sake of my ten-year-old life, I could not comprehend why they were telling us not to change. Surely they didn’t want us to stay in fifth grade forever? Or, god forbid, in middle school forever? Can you imagine? The thought is enough to give me nightmares for a week. Maybe it was a northwest Wisconsin thing, “Don’t change,” or maybe it was a late 90s thing. I don’t know. Are people still saying this? Maybe I don’t want the answer to that question. But I can tell you one thing: I was so relieved when I stumbled across a Heraclitus quote:
“The only thing that is constant is change.”
This dude was a pre-Socratic philosopher. If he’s on my side, then I’m probably doing okay.
Spring is all about change, and most major world religions and philosophies recognize this change through worship and meditation. In celebration of all the beautiful change that comes with the season, here are six ways that people across the world ponder and celebrate the simultaneous fragility and immense focus and power spring sweeps into our lives every year.
1. To Everything (Turn! Turn! Turn!)
I grew up on music from the 60s and 70s, and rocked out to The Byrds’ version of Pete Seeger’s song on Oldies 92.9 long before I realized that “Turn! Turn! Turn!” actually had its roots in the Christian Bible, specifically Ecclesiastics.
1For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.9What gain has the worker from his toil? 10I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 11He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; 13also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.
(Ecclesiastics 3: 1-13, ESV)
Spring in the Christian tradition is largely associated with Lent, a season of prayer and reflection that typically lasts 40 days and ends with the celebration of Good Friday (Christ’s crucifixion) and Easter Sunday (Christ’s resurrection - that's today!). It’s a time to ponder what kind of seeds you are sowing in your life, as Matthew recalls in the Parable of the Sower.
1That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 2And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, 6but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. 7Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9
(Matthew 13:1-9, ESV)
Summarized: seek the good soil. Plant seeds with care and love and you will receive care and love.
2. Thoughts from Buddhism
Sit quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
– Zen saying
The exact timing of Buddhist New Year celebrations varies from country to country and culture to culture, but many of them occur around the Spring Equinox in March. Songkran, celebrated as the traditional Thai New Year, is marked by a water festival. Water washes away negativity in our lives and symbolizes renewal and rebirth.
Songkran Festival, Jhonghe City, Taipei County, Taiwan
In Buddhist philosophy, spring is a time to recommit to mindfulness and embrace impermanence. As things grow, other things must die. The Thai Forest Tradition master Ajahn Chah teaches about impermanence by holding up his water glass:
“Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.”
Just as the only constant in life is change, the only promise in life is death. We are inevitably broken back down into the dust from which we came, and this in itself is reason enough to find the beauty in every single breath we take.
3. Holi: Festival of Love
The ancient Hindu tradition of celebrating Holi falls on the full moon, or Phalgun Purnima. The festival begins with a bonfire on Holi eve to celebrate the victory of good over evil. Throughout the next day people celebrate the beginning of spring with hugs, presents, and the vividly colored powders (yep, ever wonder about the inspiration for the Color Run and its many offshoots? now you know).
In some celebrations, the colors also have medicinal purpose. They are made from colorful Ayurvedic herbs such as turmeric, sandalwood, dried tea leaves, and hibiscus. In the Ayurvedic tradition, the changes in weather can also bring on sickness. It’s the perfect season for a cleanse. Kameko Shibata recommends the following for springtime (full article here):
Try cutting out sugar, alcohol, dairy, caffeine, cooked oils and red meat for 2 weeks just to give your body a break. The first 3 days are the hardest – it gets easier after that! Getting a friend or partner to join helps a lot too. Increase your intake of water, yoga, rest and alkaline foods (green veggies, fruits, whole grains, raw olive oil, avocados). If you have allergies, increase your intake of bitters, sours and astringent. Bitter veggies (arugula, mustard greens, dandelion greens) support the liver and gallbladder, helping to cleanse the system. The excess of winter is all about sweet, heavy comfort foods. Now is the time to cleanse those out of the system.
Kitchari is a cleansing Ayurvedic dish that’s delicious and easy to make. I recommend this recipe from Elephant Journal.
Basmati, mung beans, and spices, oh my!
4. Building on Holi: Hola Mohalla
The Sikh tradition of Hola Mohalla begins the day after Holi. Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, initiated Hola as a day of mock battle and poetry competitions. The festival now spans three days and emphasis is largely on martial arts. Nihang, and armed Sikh order, are prominent participators in Hola.
The Nihang dress is known as “Shiva’s appearance” (Shiva Swarupa). Shiva is the supreme Hindu god, known as “The Transformer” or “The Destroyer”.
5. Spring Equinox at Teotihuocan
Every year for Spring Equinox, thousands of people across the globe travel to the ancient city of Teotihuacan (just north of modern-day Mexico City) and climb the Pyramid of the Sun, the third tallest pyramid in the world. Climbing the pyramid at sunrise is believed to bring one closest to solar energy and creative life force of the universe.
Myth and legend shrouds much of the facts we have concerning Teotihuacan culture. The prominence of murals depicting priests suggests that their culture was highly religious. Bones excavated at various sites suggest they participated in human and animal sacrifice, particularly in consecrating new structures, including the Pyramid of the Sun. Several Mesoamerican cultures emphasize the idea of all life rising from the dust of other bones, an apt analogy for spring. Climbing to the top of the pyramid invokes the dust of the past, the promise of the future, and a reminder of the cyclical nature of life.
6. Sakura: Cherry Blossom Festivals
In the United States, the National Cherry Blossom Festival takes place in Washington, D.C. It commemorates Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki’s 1912 gift of 3,000 cherry trees to symbolize peace and friendship between the two nations. Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, an influential woman who would later become the first female to serve on the board of the National Geographic Society, first began petitioning for planting cherry trees along the Potomac River in 1885. She was turned down every year for 24 years, at which point she decided to raise the money to buy the trees herself. She penned a letter to First Lady Helen Herron Taft, who took a keen interest in the idea. The official gift from Japan was received in 1912, and the trees were planted along the river from 1913-1920. The first official national celebration of the cherry blossoms took place in 1934.
In Japan, sakura celebrations date back to the 9th century. Nothing quite says spring like millions of cherry blossoms. The folk song “Sakura” is exuberant in its lyrics, while its melody invokes a sense of turbulence that comes with the changing season. Once again we see the theme of change: the melody and words together invoke the inherent beauty of impermanence.
Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms, Across the Spring sky, As far as you can see,
Is it a mist, or clouds? Fragrant in the air. Come now, come, Let’s look, at last!
Conclusion: “Spring Giddiness,” by Rumi
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.
Happy spring, everybody. Let some joy into your hearts today.