Writer contemplates the mystery of grace

Maybe it was the recent full moon or the summer nights when stars shone in the sky like schools of silvery herring in the sand cove.

Something mysterious – but peaceful – has been saturating my soul, soothing it in a way a milk bath does a tired body; or dry, red wine, an agitated mind.

Maybe, in the words of the religious, it’s grace, and if so, it is welcomed. Paul Johannes Tillich said: “Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness … sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness.”

But just suppose grace envelops us like a cooling fog even when we’re not in pain or restlessness or in darkness. Maybe grace comes when there is some need, though undefined.

Simone Weil said, “Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.”

That’s the point: The void we can’t identify, much less articulate, until it’s filled and we reflect on what was missing in the first place, if we can.

At a funeral service last week, I sang the familiar hymn “Amazing Grace” by rote, harmonizing – poorly but piously – while holding the hand of a dear friend, and suddenly weeping at the words of a song I’ve long sung without hearing:

“‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved … Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come; ‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far.”

What is grace? Saint Augustine answered: “I know until you ask me; when you ask me, I do not know.”

Neither do I, but I felt it again Sunday in church. And I’ve felt it elsewhere on the shore, in the garden, on a walk, gazing at the July stars that illumine the nighttime coast of Maine, enjoying an evening of chamber music and, sometimes, while praying.

Or while singing. This particular Sunday, we sang a traditional Welsh melody with texts by Fred Pratt Green. The third verse spoke loudly: “For the harvests of the spirit, thanks be to God; for the good we all inherit, thanks be to God; for the wonders that astound us, for the truths that will confound us, most of all, that love has found us, thanks be to God.”

Maybe, it’s not mysterious at all. Thomas Merton wrote: “Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God.”

True as that sounds, grace surely does seem to come and go with me. And that’s a truth “that does confound.”