Welcome.
Let's turn off the world for a little bit to tune in.
Inhale,
Exhale.
On this next inhale,
Bring those shoulders up to your ears.
As you exhale,
Circle them back and down.
Welcome to a hit of hope.
The word grace can bring to mind different things.
One is physical grace.
Maybe you've seen Serena Williams play,
Or Greg Louganis dive,
Or Michelle Kwan skate,
Or Michael Jordan dunk.
What each of them can do with their bodies.
It's breathtaking.
And they make it look so easy.
But grace is not easy.
Simone Biles,
The most decorated American gymnast,
Was not born being able to leap and fly,
Twist and stick the landing.
She had to work at it,
Had to practice for days,
Weeks,
Years.
When we think of grace,
We can also think of it as a pleasing elegance and ease.
Think Dorothy Dandridge,
Audrey Hepburn.
This kind of grace means you move through life,
Not as a bulldozer,
But as a butterfly.
One more meaning that we have for grace is the act of showing mercy.
This language might be familiar to many,
Many Christians who believe God shows them grace,
Even as they are fully human.
But we as humans can show this kind of grace and mercy to one another as well.
But what does that look like?
A personal example for me is I was once teaching a yoga class at a woman's studio.
She had beautiful crystal bowls that when played,
Bring about healing.
At the beginning of this class,
Everyone had chosen a piece of rose quartz,
A stone of self love and healing,
And each student brought it back to place their stone in front of their mats.
So after all of the students had chosen their stones,
I picked mine.
I turned to bring it back to my mat,
And the rock literally flew out of my hand,
Seemingly of its own volition.
It arced through the air and landed right in the middle of the bowl I was going to play during class.
My stone chipped the beautiful bowl.
I brought the bowl to the owner of the studio and explained what had happened.
I asked her how much the bowl was because I was going to replace it.
She told me it cost over $2,
000.
That's right,
$2,
000.
And then she said,
But don't worry about it.
From what you said about your stone leaping out of your hand.
It sounds like it needed to happen.
Please forget about it.
I did not.
Agitated as I was I went back and taught class but afterward I tried to tell the woman again that I would pay for it.
She said no.
I sent her an email telling her I would teach classes free for as long as it took to pay off the bowl.
She said,
No.
That is grace.
And when we are thinking about that kind of grace there are all kinds of lessons we can learn.
First,
When we mess up.
Sometimes we can barely name what we did.
It was hard to share that story because I still feel all kinds of roiling emotions about it.
I didn't deserve her kindness.
I'm a bad person and here is just more proof.
We have to bring these things out into the light,
Because then they do not have the chance to infect us.
Another lesson from this story is we all want grace,
Right when we mess up.
We want someone to say,
It's okay,
Sweetie.
Let it go.
Inhale.
While we all want grace extended to us.
It can almost feel impossible to extend that grace to someone else.
Just like the physical grace I talked about at the beginning.
We have to remember that performing grace is not easy.
While the woman whose bowl I broke made it look effortless,
Easy to be graceful about what I had done.
She had obviously done a lot of work around letting things go,
Especially those things that you cannot control.
Grace is not easy because we are called on to be graceful right at those moments when we are often the most wronged,
The most hurt.
When the world feels bitter and mean,
When what we really want to do is explode.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Grace is not easy.
We might not get it right the first time or the fifty third time.
And yet grace is an enduring force,
A benevolence in the seat of the soul.
Grace ultimately makes our lives and the lives of those around us better.
Thus,
We might consider practicing grace.
It is vital not only that we do so for others,
But also for our very own selves.
We are not divine.
We are fallible.
Fall-able.
But let us not despair of that fact.
Let us remember Simone Biles.
How many times did she crash to the floor?
How many times did she smash her body on the uneven bars of the beam or the beam?
But she got back up.
She took a deep breath.
And tried again.
And after all those years,
After all that work,
She can rise and fly so full of lightness and grace that everyone watching her cheers.
Namaste.
