Grace

The freedom to be together, to know one another, to be known, to love, to be loved - these are gifts of grace. The gift of life, of breath, of time, of this moment - and the knowledge of a past, and a future. The gift of imagination, of envisioning something not yet true or real, but possible simply because we can see it in our minds and in our hearts. These are gifts of grace.

Sometimes I day-dream that my church, my future church, will be called Grace Unitarian Universalist Church. From my searches, I have not found such a place to exist. We seem to have a low account of grace in Unitarian Universalism - which I find confusing, given that Universalism is all about grace. Perhaps it is true, what my TA in theology class last quarter thought - in order to have a strong understanding of grace, you must have a strong understanding of sin. Neither concept is robustly developed in contemporary Unitarian Universalism, at least from what I have witnessed.

In my interviews with Revs. Jennifer & David Owen-O'Quill in Chicago last month, they both articulated that their gospel, their good news, is that God loves you - no matter what. That God's love is unconditional. They, like my TA, connected this good news to a strong theology of sin - we are all sinful and broken, and in the midst of that, we are ontologically and essentially good - for God is good, and God's grace is eternal.

I don't know. My sense of grace is not necessarily connected to sinfulness. Instead, I want to think about grace in the sense of unearned and undeserved gifts. Not unearned or undeserved because of your personal negative qualities or actions, but because there is no way to earn, or deserve, the kinds of gifts that constitute grace. Such as life. What could one do to "earn" life? Such as love. What could on do to "deserve" love? Such as those mountains my family and I stood upon this weekend. The children my partner and I held in our hands. Nothing a human can do could measure up to these things - because they are immeasurably good, infinitely valuable.


But UUs like to earn things, and so we tell ourselves that grace is an unnecessary concept - because human hands strive together and bring us all that we can conceive of. I count myself among this group I like to earn things. I don't know how not to feel like I've earned something - measurably good or otherwise. Have I done enough? Am I worth this gift? The good news Jennifer and David propose, if temporarily lifted out of a traditional theology of sin (I'll come back to this later, I promise), grants us the possibility that irrevocably the answer to these questions are: Yes, and Yes.

What a relief grace might be for those of us who seek salvation through endless lists of tasks. To know that even if we do nothing at all, even if we come empty-handed and directionless, we are already and always ok - what good news this might be.

As I have been attempting to re-assemble my yoga practice, I have been remembering what yoga has taught me about grace, and how hard a concept it is for me to believe or embrace. Whether in handstands or downward dogs, I found myself perpetually solving my struggles through muscle. Through determined force. I can get there if I push my way into it - I am strong, I tell myself. And sometimes I would. But often, I would hit a block that I could not overcome. Because to move forward, you need not only strength, but openness, willingness to receive from somewhere other than your muscles, faith in something uncontrollable and intangible, that is, grace. To move into a pose, you must not move into the pose, but let the pose be in you. Breathe, relax, wait. You cannot push your way in to these places, and in fact your pushing only delays your arrival. Your wanting only gets in the way of receiving. This is grace.

My friend from seminary (who I hope will sometime soon come and post a comment or two), who was raised UU, told me that finding the concept of grace as an adult was a deeply liberating encounter. It was something she found utterly lacking in her religious upbringing. Again, I find this bewildering given that Universalism makes no sense without a strong theology of grace. As we continue to manifest communities of depth in our congregational lives, I have a sense that we must do so alongside a great dialogue and growing appreciation for the concept of and witness to grace. And so I continue to dream of this future church, and imagine it might one day be real.