Grace

At Home With God

The word grace conjures many different facets of the experience of being home with God … where that home is not a place of residence … but a way … that we feel about things. Its founding is without grounds of any kind … but its rediscovery … is by the implications of redemption … atonement … and surrender. Of these surrender … is probably the most fundamental experience of the devout … and is undertaken with a clear sense of the relation … we undertake to the personality we surrender to.

 

It appears curious that a life of surrender has a major significance … in the phenomenology of our lives. It feels like returning to someone … an instrument of power … that we have been privileged to experience. It nurtured on our innocence … and introduced us to a world … of reward and punishment … and guided us with a foresight … about doing the right thing. It caused a wonder about its own intrinsic ability to know … and to relate … to the essentials of any experience … as if we had ourselves … been through it before … in our condition of grace.

 

Certainly a mind that has traveled far in search of its own virtue … and sense of not knowingly done anything wrong … eventually gurgles in its emotion of speech … to resemble a state of not knowing what we are doing … without that being a fault. And since that is as close to surrender as any red blooded man ever gets … it registers a pause in his many affairs … and he finds that his mind has come to intertwine with his emotions … in a spontaneous gesture of togetherness.

 

Where he had gone ahead before … he now slows down to stay in contact with his other faculties. Where he was slow before … he finds himself speeding up to catch the pace of life … running alongside him. It leads to a participation … and integration … with the life of the society … where he becomes apprised of the part he plays … in an on-going relation of issues … that is now unfolding itself … to his greater vision … of its wisdom. He may find himself affirming such an experience … and creating an acquiescence to the wisdom of the all … and the part he plays in it.

 

In comparison the experience of atonement … it introduces him to God … and the way in which fire is fought with fire … and an eye is extracted for an eye … in a scheme that winds the rage we feel around … the pillars of justice … and the belief in an unfailing faith … of our offerings in life. It draws a clear picture of the wages of sin … and the discipline we undertake to create avoidance … denials … and suppression of urges … in relation to the God we worship. In return … he brings to us … the peace of a mind now installed in understanding … that to receive we must first give.

 

It draws the mind to a level of association with actions that is total … and is tied to the goodwill of all … in a circle that we relate to in our daily lives. It creates initiatives for helping the less fortunate … a love for the depraved and wicked … with the resemblance of view ... that such people are not evil in themselves … but are fallen with … loving too much … and understanding too well … but not wisely. It would indeed be a perfect world … if we all knew everything. What's the point of gaining the whole world … but losing the self?

 

In atonement … we have given up the ability … to reward ourselves or to punish our actions. Instead we rely on the advent of an impulse … or grace … to inform us of the good or bad of what we do.  It enables us to understand the ways of the creator … and quite often we are able to put that in words … and to bring it to the benefit … of others who may wish to know. In that we are like servants to his will … that seek only to preserve the way of life in the world … and to lead it to its natural destination.

In a reported discourse between Lao Tze and Confucius … Confucius is viewed as promoting good governance of the society … while Lao Tze responds with the view that a good citizen doesn't need to be governed. This relation between the two poles of … nurturing and self sufficiency … occupies our thoughts … in the search for peace and perfection. And in 5,000 years of recorded history … we may have passed the beginning stage of innocent surrender … and may today be at the exit between atonement and redemption. It will test our years of preparedness.

 

In the recorded reports of redemption … man it appears … is simply thrown into the dry desert of nothingness … and tasked with creating an appreciation for what's involved in creation. And thereafter to mould a life for himself … in the midst of created life … in a rediscovery of ourselves … from the reins of guidance … to the freewill of love and thought. Its a new beginning into a world experience that re-cultivates … volition … appreciation … and a finer understanding of everything that has come into manifestation in creation.

 

In doing so … the man re-discovers himself … and realizes why we may have  collectively acquiesced to such a scheme of lost and re-discovery. The early Indics … in viewing this through the eyes of love … gained through surrender and grace … referred to it as a leela … a play we engage to occupy ourselves. Today as we undergo the trials of redemption … we would do well to remember such a playful view and to realize that its many parts of the same experience.

 

As we view our experiences today in the crucible of tests … we may come to the realization that we are no longer granted surrender or atonement. Its the redemption … a delivery from the sin of ignorance … from which there is no going back … only onward to a class of perfection.