There Shall be Grace

Our silent language

The trees in Maine are turning. Birch trees encircling the pond behind my house go first. Eventually, they will be the bright pop of yellow in a sea of reds and oranges. But not yet. Right now, the foliage is still mostly a faded green, and the tops of the birches are just beginning to shift.

There’s a small interval, just 10 minutes or so in the 7 am hour, when the morning light slides over the horizon and hits only the tops of the slender birches. turning their leaves bright gold; tiny, brilliant coins glittering on giant fronds waving in the wind. I look for it every morning now, watch it appear as the sun rises, bringing me morning magic, then see it fade again to the muted colors of summer’s end.

That is my tiny morning gift of grace, a silent reminder that beauty is coming.

There shall be grace.

I still hear that word in a chord of my mother’s voice, her lessons always falling toward that thought. Pray for grace. Look for grace. Find the saving grace amidst the chaos, or wait, wait faithfully until grace appears. There shall be grace.

I carry the phrase with me now, in this time of collective cruelty. I believe I am not alone.

Last night I ordered my favorite spinach salad at a local Greek/Italian restaurant I’ve known for 40 years. We were, all of us, just ordinary folk. The middle-aged man next to me quietly eating his pizza, a heavy silver chain bouncing a gold tipped bullet against his chest as he chewed; the tattooed heavily muscled dude smiling at the bar, angling from seat to seat among friends, or maybe those he hoped would be. An aging biker dressed all in black, silver-linked belt cutting his waist, bandana wrapped tightly around his skull, then knotted and left hanging in a ponytail down his neck. Whenever I glanced his way he caught my eye, challenged me with frozen blue eyes and a goatee of silver. What did he see, I wondered?

Two women appeared when I lifted my head, startling me and freezing my expression to mask the reflexive feeling, somewhere between pity and shock, at their smooth young skin and hugely oversized bodies walking to the table behind me.

And, just then, a Disneyland irony, the perfect little American family: blonde slender Mom, gentle Dad, a daughter in a princess headband, and two tiny crew cut sons slid into the booth to my left.

Freeport.

Maine.

America.

We all ate in silence.

As we rose to leave, four people heading out, four more heading in, we froze between two sets of double doors. A standoff of politeness, all 8 of us gesturing, or holding a door in deference to another. For a long moment, no one moved. Then I heard a soft laugh beside me, and I, the elder by a lot, accepted the courtesy of going first.

Still, the group stood, silent as an honor guard as I went through, stepping into grace.

Are we all more wounded now, welcoming a chance to prove our worth, to cancel another’s expectation? Are we loathe to live in caricatures of ourselves? In the imaginings that hatred brings unbidden to our thoughts. Am I alone in sensing something more than ordinary kindness?

I brought half my salad home, as always, this time with a dressing of grace.

I did not watch the rally disguised as memorial last night. I have learned enough about the tragic life and death of this young man who wrapped venom in Christianity’s vestments and called it good. I will not watch those who funded and promoted him, now turn him into a craven idol for their political cause.

But I will remember Grace.

I will look to see it, to find it, to be it. To turn it into that momentary flash of hope the sun gives me every morning. Beauty is on its way. We will get through this horrific time. We will know one another by the silent language of kindness.

Let there be Grace.