Self-help or Grace?

 This week's quotation is by that inimitable apologist for atheism, Richard Dawkins. He writes, "Our life is as meaningful, as full and as great as we make it ourselves."

And I do agree with him, up to a point. Our attitude to life, to the events, people, places and things we encounter is very much up to us. Some of us are glass half-full people, who look on the bright side, others are glass half-empty people, who see the problems and pain in everything they encounter. Then there are the realists, who insist that they see life exactly as it is. 

BUT, for those of us who are religious and/or spiritual, there is another dimension to life, which for simplicity's sake, I will call grace. Christians have many ideas as to what "grace" means, but for me, it is a free gift from God, which has the power to transform us, on the soul level. 

I love liberal Catholic theologian Richard Rohr's take on the meaning of grace. He believes (and I do too) that God's love is limitless and unconditional - we don't have to earn it; we just have to accept it. Grace is how God works in the world to wake us up and enable us to accept His/Her love. I believe that it is through God's freely-given grace that we are able to live full and great and meaningful lives.

In her wonderful book, My Grandfather's Blessings, Rachel Naomi Remen shares a beautiful prayer, which for me, epitomises the difference between relying on ourselves, as Richard Dawkins advises and accepting the gift of God's love: 

"Days pass, and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles.

Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing.

Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk.

Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed.

And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder:

'How filled with awe is this place, and we did not know it.'"

Amen.