Cathleen Falsani

Such arguments remind me of a scene from Woody Allen's movie Manhattan, where a group of people is talking about sex at a cocktail party and one woman says that her doctor told her she had been having the wrong kind of orgasm. Woody Allen's character responds by saying, __id you have the wrong kind? Really? I've never had the wrong kind. Never, ever. My worst one was right on the money._ Grace works the same way. It is what it is and it's always right on the money. You can call it what you like, categorize it, vivisect it, qualify, quantify, or dismiss it, and none of it will make grace anything other than precisely what grace is: audacious, unwarranted, and unlimited.

God can and does use anything God chooses to get our attention. Who's to say the hawk wasn't sent as an agent of grace to catch my wandering attention and quiet what Buddhists might call my __onkey mind,_ which is more often than not swinging wildly from branch to branch on intellectual and emotional trees. On the way back down the hiking trail after my encounter with the hawk in Big Sky, I stopped thinking and started looking and listening. That's when I realized winter was turning into spring before me. Change was happening. Creation, and perhaps the Creator, was speaking. I just needed to be outside to hear the voice.

Grace has a way of sneaking up on you like that. When you least deserve it.

I would say that grace is startling,_ Jean told me as he began retelling the story of how he wound up as pastor of Lagniappe Presbyterian Church, a growing congregation that meets in a glorified metal hangar in Bay St. Louis. __t's just startling. It isn't supposed to work. This wasn't supposed to work.

In her inestimable audacity, Julia was the catalyst in my life for something beautiful. I hadn't anticipated her__adn't even wanted her, truthfully__ut there she was. A little something extra that made all the difference in the world.

Why grace? Because some days, it's the only thing we have in common. Because it's the one thing I'm certain is real. Because it's the reason I'm here. Because it's the oxygen of religious life, or so says a musician friend of mine, who tells me, __ithout it, religion will surely suffocate you._ Because so many of us are gasping for air and grasping for God, but fleeing from a kind of religious experience that has little to do with anything sacred or gracious.

Trying to explain or define grace is like catching the wind in a cardboard box or describing the color green.

This is where Jean's stubbornness and, perhaps, God's stubborn grace came into play. __y definition of grace would be multifaceted, but part of it would certainly be God's passion for brokenness. He does, he really does love brokenness,_ Jean told me. __race doesn't obsess with ourselves. It obsesses with people and with brokenness. This is a hard place to live, but God is bigger than hard places to live.

We're so worried about the legal details of crossing doctrinal t's and dotting sociopolitical i's that we miss the big picture. The love picture. The one thing Jesus was really clear about: LOVE. If we could just get that one thing down, I believe the details would take care of themselves.

Sometimes grace is having the strength to persevere through the storm.Sometimes it's having the guts to rebuild, to take a chance, to follow your nose and your heart rather than your head.Sometimes grace is finding out that your preconceived notions are dead wrong. Sometimes it's being surprised by joy. Sometimes grace is something you can feel even if you can't see it. And sometimes it's a bowl of watermelon gazpacho when you were expecting Taco Bell.

While it's true that you may lose your religion during the course of a lifetime, you never lose your salvation. Once you let Jesus in your kitchen, he just keeps on making peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and he never leaves.

Everyone experiences grace, even if they don't realize it. It's kind of like Moby's music. You could ask your average sixty-something-year-old retired banker in Connecticut if he's ever heard of Moby and/or his music and the response you'd receive more than likely would be a resounding, __o__hat's a Moby?_ But if you say, __emember that American Express commercial where Tiger Woods is putting around New York City? Remember the song playing? That was Moby._ __h, then, OK. I guess I have heard Moby,_ our theoretical retired banker in New Canaan might say. __o _ what exactly is a Moby?_ That's like grace. Not that grace is a pretentious vegan techno-rocker, but you get the idea. Grace is everywhere, all around us, all of the time. We only need the ears to hear it and the eyes to see it.

Grace to me is a little bit of extra help when you're feeling stuck or doomed or, probably, hopefully, out of good ideas on how to save yourself, and how to salvage the situation or the friendship or the whatever it is,_ Anne Lamott once told me. __ wish it was accompanied by harp music so you could know that's what was happening, but for me it's that extra pause or that extra breath or that extra minute's patience against all odds._ On that first trip to Ireland, grace__he kick-in-the-pants, clarifying, cosmic-pause-button kind of grace__idn't just have a harp. It had an entire soundtrack...

When Annunziata said she loved me or any of her thousands of other friends and beloveds, she was really saying, at least in my mind, __od loves you._ To quote the singer/songwriter James Taylor, she showered the people she loved with love, always showing the way that she felt without holding back. Even as her body could barely contain her soul any longer, she'd open wide the gates of herself with a smile, that giggle, her twinkling eyes, and she'd let the supernatural love flow through her. Walking out of the chapel after her funeral, a woman I'd never seen before stopped me and said, __ou're Cathleen, aren't you?_ __es,_ I croaked, tears rolling off my nose as I fingered the prayer card with Annunziata's picture on it. Slipping an arm around my shoulders, the woman explained that she was one of Annunziata's former students and said, __he loved you so much._ I know.

Some theologians argue that one kind of grace is better than another, and that some people think they're experiencing __ivine_ grace when it's actually just __ommon.__o me, that's like bickering about what color God's eyes are. (They're hazel, in case you were wondering.)

I've heard it said that grace is God reaching God's hands into the world. And the Bible tells us that we are part of the body of Christ, that if we let the Spirit move through us, we can become the hands of Christ on earth. Hands that heal, bless, unite, and love. I'd like to think God's hands are a bit like Grace's man hands__entle but big, busy, and tough. God's hands are those of a creator__n artist who molded and shaped the universe out of a void, who hewed matter from nothingness.

Jesus must have had man hands. He was a carpenter, the Bible tells us. I know a few carpenters, and they have great hands, all muscled and worn, with nicks and callused pads from working wood together with hardware and sheer willpower. In my mind, Jesus isn't a slight man with fair hair and eyes who looks as if a strong breeze could knock him down, as he is sometimes depicted in art and film. I see him as sturdy, with a thick frame, powerful legs, and muscular arms. He has a shock of curly black hair and an untrimmed beard, his face tanned and lined from working in the sun. And his hands__ands that pounded nails, sawed lumber, drew in the dirt, and held the children he beckoned to him. Hands that washed his disciples' feet, broke bread for them, and poured their wine. Hands that hauled a heavy cross through the streets of Jerusalem and were later nailed to it. Those were some man hands.

Then round about the age of twenty-five, I was tired of being tired of being scared about doing something that, if I deconstruct it honestly, might somehow cost me my salvation and make God love me less. When I understood, in God's grace, that there was nothing__ot a thing__ could do to make God love me any less or any more, when I understood that there was nothing wrong or right about who I am in God's eyes, that I'm just loved, I started to live. Boldly. Or at least as boldly as I can muster much of the time.