grace dance

"For many, romantic love is the closest experience of pure grace. Someone at last feels that I — I! — am the most desirable, attractive, companionable creature on the planet. Someone lies awake at night thinking of me. Someone forgives me before I ask, thinks of me when she gets dressed, orders her life around mine. Someone loves me just the way I am. For this reason, I think, modern writers like John Updike and Walker Percy, who have strong Christian sensibilities, may choose a sexual affair as a symbol of grace in their novels. They are speaking the language our culture understands: grace as a rumor, not a doctrine." P.Y. and ...

"I had experienced the “drip- pings of grace,” C. S. Lewis’s term for what awakens deep longing for “a scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”  

~Philip Yancey What's So Amazing About Grace link to PDF excerpt from the book

I've read a couple of his books ... if I weren't behind on my reading I'd order this book or the follow up book, Vanishing Grace.  Heard him speak this past week and ... I am amused by my cluelessness ... A few guys came in and set down front and center, I assumed one of them was him.  A bit later another guy came in and sat down right in front of me ... exchanged pleasantries (I guess that's what you'd call it, he said my sweather was very bright red and I agreed.  I thought his hair was supernaturally curly but said nothing about that which I thought was pleasant of me), and introductions as we were instructed to do with those immediately around us ... I said my name as we shook hands, but he didn't share his ... I thought that was a bit peculiar, but not that uncommon in the South ... I can't guess why, just that it happens often enough to not be unusual.  Yes, it was Mr. Yancey.  If I saw him out and about I would think "he's an engineer" ... he has engineer veneer with academic underpinnings.  I like his books immensely.  I also like that he likes Lewis.

sexual affair as a symbol of grace    Brilliant idea.  At least I believe so. It's probably a bit of a mess as our relationships tend to be, but if I recall the earliest leanings of "love" things did appear to be quite "graceful".  I haven't had an affair as we commonly use the word - I'm referring to the whirlwind romance which preceded my marriage.  The yearning for grace probably does position us susceptible to extramarital affairs/meanderings.

This isn't the main idea of his book as I understand it ... I think that's gonna be about encouraging "us" to be more Christ-like in our attitudes and actions towards each other.  Christ's life is/was/is grace personified.  

The most powerful idea that's entered the world in the last few thousand years - the idea of grace - is the reason I would like to be a Christian. ~BONO

I think "trust", as in trusting Christ, eases the way for the good of grace (and it's all good). Pope Francis is quoted as saying  "Grace is not part of consciousness; it is the amount of light in our souls, not knowledge nor reason."  Incomplete/faulty knowledge and reason do seem to encourage "not-grace".  

For me, this has been the worst year ever,  I was pretty excited about it back in January, but it's been very trying.  I have actually found a way to occupy myself so as to not have time to do anything but just what the day demands.  I have been training myself to stay "right here" in this day.  "Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle." (Elizabeth Kubler-Ross)  One of my incredibly observant kids says I am amazingly adept at denial, while I perceive "the skill set" to be optimism, or ... faith even. Either may be fueled by grace. "Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears, not to oust them." (Vincent McNabb) 
Hope. 
Last year I wondered how hope "fit".  

  protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres ... loves

My brother's battle with cancer is certainly on my heart and mind ... and there are other things equally pressing for which cancer is a good metaphor.  Grace helps. (I think it may be pretty much the only thing that helps.)
"But sometimes we find ourselves in places where no one comes to sit with us.  It is then that we most need to remember that God is there with us... ." ~Why Does It Have to Hurt, McCartney.  Grace builds the foundation for the sweetness of I Cor. 13.

I know nothing, 

except what everyone knows 

— 

if there when Grace dances, I should dance.

~ W. H. Auden