Secret Agent Grace

"Let nothing disturb you,
Nothing frighten you.
All things are passing
God never changes.
Patient endurance attains all things.
Whoever possesses God lacks nothing,
God alone is sufficient."
      St. Teresa of Avila


Do not be fooled by the simplicity of these words of St. Teresa.  They pack a wallop and call into play the power of the universe.  The secret service agents that guarded President Obama during his second inauguration pale in comparison to the force that we have at our disposal.  And grace is ours without merit; we do not have to earn or win it.  It is the never ending mercy that sees us through.

If you blew through the prayer, I would urge you to go back and meditate on the power of those simple words.  We have been journeying from the ordinary to the extraordinary in this blog and before we got any further along the path, I thought that we needed to rest a spell and consider by whose power we are making this journey.  "Whoever possesses God lacks nothing."  I do not care by what name we know the divine power of the universe; what I do wish is that we stop at this point and acknowlege that we are not alone and that there is no way that we make this journey in our own strength.  Carl Jung inscribed over the front door of his house as well as on his tombstone: "Bidden or not bidden, God is present." 

Not sure about you, but I like to be invited.  So I'm bidding.....because I believe that secret agent grace is the difference between making it or not.  Rudy Ruettiger, whose life's dream to play football for Notre Dame was depicted in the movie, "Rudy," asked the question:  "What would you do if you knew that you could not fail?"  Grace is the quiet assurance that gives us the edge to keep going.  "Patient endurance attains all things." 

All of us have the potential that we need to accomplish our dreams. Some of us believe enough in those dreams to take action. When the results aren't quite what we had hoped, we start to waffle and doubt our potential.  This in turn causes us to take less action which leads to less results fueling a downward spiral.  If we take the time to ask for grace, little "helpers" in the form of "lemons" appear.  Grace gives us the ability to see these "lemons" for what they are - little nudges to get us back on track towards fulfilling our dreams.  "God alone is sufficient."

In her book, My Beloved World, Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor details her journey as a Puerto Rican immigrant growing up in South Bronx public housing to a Princeton college graduate and Yale law graduate to a partnership in a New York law firm, through a series of judgeships to the highest court in the land.  "The challenges I faced are not uncommon, but neither have they kept me from uncommon achievements" she states.  There was nothing in her early life to predict such great accomplishments - her father was an alcoholic who died early; her mother worked as a nurse to provide a meager living; Sotomayor developed juvenile diabetes and at age eight, she had to learn to give herself her own shots.  All of these "lemons" made her self-sufficient, a trait that would serve her well as a minority student in elite ivy league schools.  Grace had already helped her break down many obstacles in her life by the time she had to face the prejudice of her wealthier classmates.  This hard won resilience also conditioned her to succeed.*

In his book, I, Reality and Subjectivity, David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. lays out the direness of the human condition: "...the human entity has to contend not only with conscious data that could be put into a computer, but it also has to deal with unconscious data and energy fields of which they have no comprehension, as well as unknown individual or group karmic propensities; thus, no computer could possibly be programmed since a major portion of the most significant data is missing."  Gives a whole new meaning to having a bad day, doesn't it?.  He goes on to write, "Of its own, the personal self cannot really survive, much less prosper......life is supported by the nonlinear dimension of spirit.  It is the over-riding guidance of the spirit that enables survival."

"Bidden or not bidden, God is present"  Sotomayor in her book's prologue writes, "My purpose in writing is to make my hopeful example accessible.  People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible."  Grace will see us through.  

* The Economist, February 2, 2013