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"I do not at all understand the mystery of Grace- only that it meets us where we are, but does not leave us where it found us."- Anne Lamontte.
Can you wait in peace until grace comes?
This question came to me as I was mixing black rice on the stovetop. Watching the small grains mingle with the water, oil, and salt. I had been tussled through a tough place for the last three days and was in that very moment, finally freed, peace was restored. This question felt like a friend, speaking to me from the outside, gently asking me to reconsider the way I handled my stress.
As the water began to roll into a boil, I recounted how I had mimicked this torrid pot of rice. I had become stressed and joined the roiling water of fear, worry, contempt, and chaos. I couldn't create any distance between myself and the mental barrage. Or, more honestly put, I refused to. I allowed myself to turn a blind eye to my wisdom. I know very well, peace returns. I know very well challenging moments are coils of smoke that leave the room soon enough if we let them. I know my grievances are illusory and amorphous. I know my task is to witness without engagement. To feel it and watch it leave. But instead, I let it pull me along as if a dog on a leash. As if a pot of rice, simmering into a squall.
The challenge of our lives is to remain coherent enough to choose to practice, especially when the going gets tough.
When great distress arrives on the horizon, we drop our wisdom and pick up the drums and cymbals of our pain. We sing one song, and that song's name is: I cannot do this. Our most challenging moments can be carrying the analgesic smoke that leads us to suffer a type of amnesia in the moment.
I have been studying myself for decades, and still, I find in the throngs of stress-provoking thoughts, I put my hands up in defeat and fall face forward, wallowing in the shallow pond of my pain. I am confident this pain does not last forever, as I have learned this lesson many times before, yet I still willingly fall. I still forget to let go of the upheaval. I have yet to master the true art of letting go. "Just don't pick it up," all the great teachers say, but like a small child still learning the shapes of blocks, I pick it up again and again—years pass. We are still looking at the same blue block.
