"Can Unitarian Universalists Receive Grace?"
by Rev. Kimi Riegel
May, 2005

Early last week I had an experience of grace. It was a sunny morning and I was coming from the gym and dropping off my dry cleaning. I was driving to work feeling pretty virtuous for all I had accomplished already in the day. There was a school bus a lane away at the light. Leaning on the window was a sweet little girl’s face. She was just staring out into the world. Maybe a bit tired, maybe dreaming of what her day would be, maybe just dreaming. Then she caught my eye and smiled. The black man in the obviously expensive red sports car between us was watching her too. He turned when she smiled and smiled at me too. Both he and I looked back at her and she shyly dropped below the window. The light changed and the man in the bright red sports car waved at me as we both took off. He acknowledged our connection through that little girl. Three complete strangers, who will likely never meet again had shared smiles. It was a gift that set my day on the right track. For me it was an example of our common humanity as we were each uplifted with a smile. What grace!

Last Tuesday afternoon a man who was drunk slammed into three cars on 12 Mile Road. He killed a woman and her two children. Where was Grace for them? For their families where was Grace? It could have been Alex or I with Preston as we travel that stretch of road often at that time to bring Preston home from school. There but by the Grace of God go I.

Grace. Is it luck? One woman I workout with always corrects herself when she says she is lucky. There is no luck she says, only God.
Grace is a word that has become associated with the Christian faith. Grace, according to that tradition, is a gift from God that comes to us even though we have not asked for it. Grace is that state in which we live because God has granted us life. Grace is what God grants us even though we don’t deserve it. The technical definition is "unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration." Regeneration in this case means spiritual growth. This is done at God’s initiation. Thus, if you put the words of my workout friend together with the definition: for Christians there is no luck but when we feel lucky we should understand that is God and thus we will grow in spiritual appreciation for God.

In the Jewish tradition Grace is a central theme in the study of the Kabbalah or mystical teachings. Grace in that context is the abundance, or energy, that flows through all of life. In the words of the Zohar, a mystical text, “this energy flows through the system like a river emerging out of this source (what we might call God though that is simplistic) and breaking apart into the separate channels of divinity.” Within this system it is considered an optical illusion that the channels of creation are indeed separate. Grace then is that which connects us to all existence, grace is within us and within the divine, one and the same energy.

In more traditional Rabbinic circles, grace is what assists humanity, but for Jews it is not truly unmerited. Some Rabbinical sources suggest that God and man act simultaneously, that the grace of God then is an additional boost to those who work with him. God helps those who help themselves.
However before Christianity and Judaism there were the three Graces. These were the goddess-like creatures whose names meant joy, good cheer and delight. They were the goddesses of charm, beauty, creativity and fertility. They were part of the great rituals known as the Eleusinian Mysteries. These rituals were an element in the rites of spring and connected to the cult surrounding Demeter and her daughter Persephone. These rituals are largely lost to us today but it is clear that sacrifices were made to the Graces that the world might contain more charm and beauty.

It all seems pretty magical no matter what tradition you favor. Why then even preach on the topic? It is not a word that Unitarian Universalists use often. It is not a necessary part of anyone's life. We can all live just fine without grace. In the words of Thomas Moore “The alternative to a life of grace is a philosophy of self and the ideal of the self-made person." We don’t need one another or the grace of Life. That however is not my personal experience. A self made life is not what I experience. There is a great deal of luck in my experience of life. And, of course, the converse: there is a great deal of the unlucky as well. There is so much that happens to one another that has little to do with free will and choice. I often look to the natural world for pointers.
For instance, it is not the gardeners choice to have a late May frost killing all the little plants. One garden book I have been reading, Second Nature by Michael Pollan, suggests there are three kinds of negative events in the life of a garden. There are those that happen because we have overdone the attention to the garden like over-fertilization, or there are those that happen because we have underdone the attention such as never feeding the soil and finally those that happen just because. He says the first two make up about 95% of gardening mistakes and sucesses. I would argue that is also true for life. About 95% of the time our good fortune is probably because we have made plans and executed those plans carefully. But the other 5% is beyond our knowing, planning or work; it is just grace. It is just because there is sun and rain that the garden does well. It is just because it is all connected to a system beyond our physical senses that the whole thing works.

Grace for me is found in the awareness that there is that interconnection, what Tillich called “ultimate dependence”. We are ultimately dependent creatures; dependent on the good graces of one another, dependent on the earth continuing to turn – dependent on some things we have no control over.
In preparing this sermon the same question kept coming back to me, namely, does grace fall upon us from outside, or does it well up from within? I imagine the answer depends upon your theology. For me, the awareness of grace wells up from within, but it is neither from within or above. It simply is.
Mercy, I believe would come from above. But this requires a view of humanity that I reject, one of depravity that needs mercy. Grace, grace is a natural and given, the experience of which does not depend upon a depraved humanity, but the noticing of it does depend upon a humanity that is not given to megalomania.

The Christian writer Kim Healy writes "Grace would seem to be exemplified by the manna given the Israelites in the desert or by the "grain that groweth without toil" of Tibetan mandalas - food not made by hands. Christ retorts to an importunate crowd that they have followed him not to see the work of God but to get a miraculous free lunch; he reminds his disciples to consider the ravens, who neither sow nor reap but are fed by their Creator.
Easton Waller writes, "Grace is not magic; it is a matter of consciousness." It is not from God or from me. It just is and if I can make myself notice the grace that exists I will be lucky. There may have been some grace in that accident on 12 Mile. I don’t know. I am not capable of seeing it.
As a Unitarian Universalist I believe that grace, the gifts we have not asked for, are there for us as much as for anyone. We simply must look. To live gracefully or spiritually is to notice those gifts we have not asked for that come from spirit. Some of us have a hard time with the word spirit or spiritual. If spirit is simply that which gives us life, if it is no more than that which is beyond our cognitive understanding then it does not belong to any religion or even to religion at all. That which holds it all together is the originator of grace. To live a graceful life or grace-filled life is to become aware and to notice the gifts of grace. Grace is spirit manifest in our lives through our consciousness. There are many ways to say it.

As Unitarian Universalists I think we have thrown the baby out with the bath water. We have let our past bad experiences and the current conservative religious culture take control of language. We can’t use the word spiritual because that conjours up images of angels and authoritarian structures. We can’t use the word grace because that removes free will, reason and control.

Ram Dass writes that grace is what brings us back to the awareness of oneness. Grace is the awareness of oneness. When that little girl and the man in the red sports car and I shared a smile we were aware of each other. He and I became aware in that moment of the commonality of all humanity whether we are white or black, rich or not so, male or female, the commonality of the gift of a smile. It is the simple connectedness that a moment can bring if we are watching and aware. That was grace. May your life be filled with many such moments. May your life be filled with Grace. May you be graceful.

Namaste.