Finding Grace

So I think this might be the final chapter of my blog. While I am still not a hundred percent sure about this decision, and I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment – I have a feeling that this is it. And I have my reasons. I mean no one reads my blog really ( my readership includes four friends, one teenage boy from upstate New York and some random passerbys); the words don’t flow as effortlessly as they used to; everyone and their cousin has a blog (even my uncle has a blog); I have moved departments and have way too much work to blog (and somehow I’m inspired to write only when I am in the office), and most importantly it’s time. When the solar system as you know it changes, then you know its time to move on. As the song says, time to turn, turn, turn. So I am saying goodbye to Pluto and my blog.

When I started this blog almost two years ago in the orange –amber days of fall, I didn’t really have an agenda - all I had was words. And I had this sense – of looking, searching – of trying to find grace. So for those of you who’ve wondered what the title is all about - this is it. Most literally, it is a biblical term that means divine love and protection (and I once got an email from some Evangelical Christian type guy saying he loved the title.), but for me it is that place where “everything’s ok.” We live in a world that is fraught with disillusionment, heartbreak, and pain, and through it all, grace knows that no matter what – it’s ok. Typically, we humans tend to fall from grace because of our stupidity and silliness, but I believe that through all our mistakes and failures – we actually find it. As we go through life and stumble and fall, we rise to grace.

“Grace in that force that infuses our lives, that keeps letting us off the hook. It is unearned and gratuitous love; the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you; grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there. “

These aren’t my words but something that I read in this book – Plan B. Before I go on to rave about this book, let me put in a quick disclaimer to say that this is not about religion even though Anne Lamott is a devout Christian. But the book is wonderfully written and funny. And I wish I had her way with words.

Everything feels crazy," writes Lamott, adding, "But on small patches of earth all over, I can see just as much messy grace as ever…'It meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.'”

The thing is that in life things don’t always work out the way you plan. But there’s grace. Grace that lets us know that even if things aren’t working exactly according to plan – it will still be OK. Because if Plan A isn’t working out, there is a Plan B. And Plan B doesn’t really require that much planning – all it asks is that we just show up. That we make ourselves get up in the morning and breathe.

So that’s what I am going to do. Breathe. I’ll still be writing. I’ve been keeping a journal for sometime now – and recently, I read some stuff that had written two or three years ago – and was struck by certain things. One – my life is quite boring. Two – I have a remarkable capacity to obsess and overanalyse (I have a five page entry revolving around a futon, a friend and a conversation, a eighteen page entry on a guy I met in New York and a phone call). And three – there’s been so much of grace in my life. I had been looking for it – only to find that I had it all along.

And that’s why I feel it’s time. And even though like the characters in my stories, I am still looking and searching – I have a feeling that we all will be ok.