“There, but for the Grace of God, go I”
I’ve always disliked this saying from the first time I heard. This implying that God’s grace belongs to a select few rather than those in the midst of some kind of difficulty i.e. poverty, physical impairment, mental impairment. This sentiment rears it’s ugly head throughout scripture think about Job’s friends telling him surely did something to deserve losing everything, those with physical impairment their parents sinned for sure.
It seems as though there is something intrinsically wrong with being poor, impaired physically or mentally. There’s not. Not in ages past, not now, not in the future. Great wealth gives us the opportunity to hide our sins beneath layers of stuff both physical, and spiritual.
A Bad Catholic Mother has a Word for the Church
Hiding behind anything fabric, alcohol, drugs, fame, fortune speaks in part to Original Sin. God is calling our name, desiring our honesty, and integrity, and yet we hide as our first parents did. I have places I hide, pride is one of those places, shame is another. Oh these places are easy to hide. While at the Conference a few weeks ago, a few other things were pointed out, eyes and ears opened ready to see and hear where the opportunities to open myself to the one who loves me with a completeness I cannot comprehend.
Bishop Robert Barron Why Remain Catholic?
These things in my faith life cross over into my quilt life. Shocking no one, right? With eyes and heart opening, and putting aside the fear that takes hold now and again preventing me from working on the quilts, and writing that need my attention. It’s time to write the stuff that’s in my head, that exemplify the exercising of the talent that God gave me to use.
Faith, and Quilting. Quilting and Faith.
Over the last several weeks I’ve been reflecting on that experience that nearly had me leave the Church. Weirdly I knew I couldn’t leave, because to whom would I go? Another recent experience has me annoyed. But whatever, it’s done. Further there is much going on in the Catholic community, a lot of ugliness that began to reveal itself some years ago, and we’re finding out about more. It needs to come to light. We need prayer, penance and fasting to get through this. Many will leave and that is gutting. I’m staying, I know why I’m staying. This will take some time to get through, to suss out the truth, to own the truth.
Owning truth isn’t always easy. Just as shedding the layers of things that stand in the way of our relationship with God, our Faith, and the talents isn’t easy. Both of these things leave us exposed, vulnerable. But this Exposition and vulnerability is precisely the place where healing begins. When we’re open to Truth in our own lives we can share that truth from that same place of Exposition and vulnerability, recognizing that mercy and grace need to be extended, and we need to be held to account.
There are things I’ll be continuing to do, and taking on as part of the openness to God, going to daily Mass as often as possible and a few other things. #sackclothandashes This is that Giving into Hope that replaces the “there, but for the grace of God, go I”. Giving into Hope is an act of Trust in God, to see this moment as ugly as it is, knowing it may get uglier, that God is moving through this.
In my quilting I will do the vulnerable thing, and write that book.
God bless,
Teri
A Quilter's Heart 