Robbins Hopkins

Spiritual Health: Being at Peace in Everyday Life

grace

GRACE?

I wonder what I really know about Grace?
It seems to elude me mostly
I like the vibration of the word
Yet I know so little about it

The flowery religious words
Do not speak to me at all
They basically obscure the clarity I seek
They seem entrenched in the past

By Mohamed Nohassi

Grace feels like active energy
It feels expansive and important
It feels a bit like I would like to be seen
It holds a knowing I would love to embody

Perhaps it is found in kind acts
Or in lovely blooming flowers
It feels like it might be in the
Sounds of music at times

I think it is something I am growing into
Yet I do not know the path forward
Maybe to live in Grace means to try
To be gentle and quiet sometimes

Photo by Kyle Johnson

Or it could mean to be thoughtful
Deeply attentive or grateful
Grace might live in the mountains
They always take my breath away

Grace seems to call me within
I know in being there, something shifts
Grace shows up when I walk along a beach
With the sand, the water and the beauty

Perhaps Grace is a call to wholeness
Always playing in the back ground
Always just elusive enough to be interesting
Just beyond one’s ability to capture it

I think of Grace as a special type of freedom
One I can grow or not, as it is up to me
Perhaps if I begin with my desire to know it
It will reveal itself, again and again

 

 

Balance and Grace

There is a patter in my heart that I know as living
It is a steady beat that offers a familiar, safe background
To all that is going on that is not steady and acceptable
To all the fear, loss, pain and suffering of invading dangers

By Anders Wideskott

This same reliability resides in the cheery morning song birds
In the ocean’s continuous ebbs and flows, dependable to the minute
The grains of wet packed sand feel solid even while ever shifting
I need to be reminded of the reliable grace of nature

In these times of required isolation, nature holds the promise of life
Returning to normal, as the flowering of nature spectacularly arrives
Even though the flowers are temporarily present by design
They form an orchestrated coming alive as if being conducted

photo by Aykut Eke

Every awakening shrub, flower and tree is here to support me
In my sustained hibernation and isolation from others
The magnificence of every living thing is bursting around me
Holding the space for freedom of movement to manifest again

I would love to have enough profound love be able to envelop us
In ways that would fully protect us from viruses running rampant
From bodies succumbing to the ravages of fever and infection
From our own deep darknesses feeding the exploding virus

Alas, the work is within, within our fear, our discomfort, our doubt
It is within the depression that comes from worry, black thoughts
The work is seeking inner peace, joy, kindness, and above all balance
Requiring infinitesimal adjustments minute by minute

Then I remember to get outside to the living, vibrating nature
To breath deeply this day, to honor this day and this body
To hold the space for all that is swirling with danger to settle
For the Oneness to help, as we millions call back balance and grace

Humility and Sacred Journeys

I don’t remember when there had been so many miracles
That I had to change my way of thinking and living
I had to open my closed mind and make a different choice
And let the Divine Energy fill my place of knowing

For a long time, I stayed in a place of skepticism
Unable to fully put my energy and faith into a loving God
Unable to let my guard down and go with the flow
Unwilling to believe because I might be dead wrong

By Milada Vigerova

I suspect that the Divine was working on me a good long time
I remember when I was a small girl in church at communion
Making a scene when I was told I was too little to partake
I pitched a fit saying that “God was for all of us”

I felt snubbed and reacted with audacious fervor
Feeling truly mistreated that I could not taste God’s body
Perhaps I was already looking for proof of God’s energy then
And I had just been barred from learning more

Years passed and I called continuous daily pain to my body
I did not understand I was doing that or why
The pain in my body masked the denial I was working with
It gave me something to always deal with daily that was undeniable

Now I know about previous lifetimes of persecution and death
Due to my “knowing” of God and my lives devoted to that knowing
I was probably trying to get through this lifetime
Without sticking out because of my connection with the Divine

By Fallon Michael

Though in the end it was a futile attempt to fit in
Trying to be skeptical like everyone else around me failed
Miracles, love as power, and grace beyond understanding kept showing up
As an energy beyond my mind and a love that never fades

Life’s experiences demanded that I sit in Silence
Demanded I continue to seek peace and balance
Required me to experience present lives full of miracles
Past and present times of connection and deep knowing of God

So here I am, more tempered than I thought was possible
Continuously seeking to release all that does not serve
Living a single-minded commitment to expand consciousness
Knowing the journey is eternal and that arrival is elusive

No one could have told me the journey is the peace I sought
The releasing of all my fears and anger would free me forever
The determination to connect with Divine Source would be met
With the ability to share with others their journeys as well