You say grace before meals. All right.
But I say grace before the concert and the opera,
and grace before the play and pantomime,
and grace before I open a book,
and grace before sketching, painting,
swimming, fencing, boxing, walking,
playing, dancing
and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

~ G. K. Chesterton:

~*~

The ideas of grace and gratitude, for me, are completely interchangeable. We say grace because we feel gratitude...we are grateful because we are filled with grace.

The dictionary has many various definitions for grace, so I'll just give you mine: that deep, free and infinite sense of love that fills your heart constantly and consistently. The knowing that you are held, that you are strong and holy and made of the same stuff as stars. That you are divine--by birth rite--and that you are both sacred and profane, immaculate and infinite and finite and so, so small...but part of something so much bigger.

I don't know about other Pagans...I can only speak for myself, but I know that my faith and my love for my Divine Mother fill and fuel me in a way that I could never possibly articulate. I believe that I am the Goddess' daughter, and as such, I live my life and pursue my passions with Her love transcending everything. I'll be kind to you because I see Her in you, too, and we're both brothers and sisters, aren't we? I'll love all animals because they're Her children, too. I'll be kind and gentle with the Earth because I can feel Her heartbeat here and there and there and there...and I will live in a state of constant awe and gratitude because of everything beautiful and ugly and lovely and sad and startlingly perfect and imperfect. Because I'm living grace, so I see it everywhere, and I want to spread it, too.

Like a born again, I hold out my faith to you and ask if you have it, if you're consumed by it. Oh, I'm not ridiculous...I know you're Buddhist and you're Christian and you're Druid and maybe you DO believe exactly as I do, but that's not why I'm here, and that's not the faith I'm holding out to you, both hands filled.

Here, I'm holding out gratitude.

I'm surrounded by grateful people, those who truly understand the point of it all, who start their days with a list of things they're grateful for, who don't just say it, but feel it...whose hearts are filled to bursting with the great sense of love and thankfulness. Not thankful to anything or one in particular...just...thankful.

It's not a new-agey-unicorn-hugging-tree-worshipping concept. From the earliest of recorded histories, human beings wrote down their gratitudes, and it can be assumed that they were filled with it long before they took chisel to rock. They were alive in a time that guaranteed nothing. They had food and water, and if they didn't, they had the ability to find it, and if they didn't, they had the stars. Stars were wonder-filled to earliest man. Imagine...imagine waking up and truly looking up at the sky, filled with light at the darkest of times, twinkling jewels that were constant. If they had nothing, they were still grateful.

You have iPods and cars and clean running water and food and jobs and money and parks and protein bars and fingerless gloves and coats and bikinis and stuffed animals and significant others and if you don't have any of these things or just some of these things, you still have the stars, you still have the land, and you still have each other.

You don't have to believe in anything, (though I wish you'd believe in something). You don't have to be religious, you don't have to be spiritual, and you certainly don't have to prescribe to any certain way of thinking to be grateful. You're not being grateful to anything...you're just being grateful. That first word is crucial.

"Saying grace" reminds us of that iconic Norman Rockwell painting, everyone's heads bowed, hands clasped. That's not how I say grace. I live it, I personify it. I smile at random strangers, I pet stray dogs, I give money to animal shelters, I volunteer, I'm Vegan, I listen to my friends, I love unconditionally...how do you live grace? What do you do to embody that gratitude, to become fueled by it so much that you simply can't sit idle...you have to, in some way give back. (I'd love to read in the comments some of the things you do that fill you~)

And that's the embodiment of "being grateful," after all. Saying grace is lovely, prayers are beautiful, and moments spent in divine conversation with your mother or father or really--whoever you believe in--are sacred things. But after it's all said and done, and there's still that gratitude in your heart, and you're itching with it, and you're consumed by its fire, and filled with love for your fellow man, or your fellow animal or perhaps--just perhaps--your fellow earth...you have to live grace, too.

The prayers that we say with our hands are often the strongest ones of all.

You don't have to open up a million dollar non profit or sit on a mountain and chant mantras until you don't have a voice left. I have amazing friends who make blankets for homeless pets, who collect pajamas for orphaned and abused children, who save their pop tabs to donate to their local food bank, who hand out dollar bills to the homeless or who simply give a hug when you really, really need it. I know people who write "you are beautiful" on changing room mirrors, who leave tiny fairy spells on park benches, who sneak sparkling bookmarks between the pages of library books, who write beautiful things on their blogs or simply post pictures of something lovely to give out a tiny ray of hope.

Gratitude and grace go hand in hand, though if you've not found something to be grateful for in a long time, it's sometimes hard to live that grace. Simply finding something to be grateful for can be a wonderful, positive thing...because that then, in the smallest of ways, changes your perceptions, and you've changed the tiniest bit, so then that changes another, and another...even a simple smile can change the world, whether you believe that now or not. I know a single smile changed me.

My greatest wish for the new year would be this: if you don't have gratitude, that you could find it. If you don't feel love, that you could feel it. If you feel rejected and dejected and sad and lonely and listless and at the bottom of the deepest, darkest well with nothing and no one to be grateful for...to know that there are always openings to wells, and always doors to dark rooms, and that there is always, always, always hope.

There is a new year, all wrapped up with fresh tape and a bow, and it's sitting on your living room table. You approach the large box with a mixture of...what. Joy? Expectancy? Relief? Dread? Hope? Yearning? ...Desire? It's almost here, this brand new armful of three hundred and sixty-five days to do with whatsoever you choose. You can do, be, dream or create anything you want with the contents of this box and what this new year holds for you is entirely up to you.

May you have something to be grateful for. May you be filled with your own grace.


by talulayu