The Grace That is Found in the Doing

"First there is the fall, then there is the recovery from the fall. Both are the grace of God." -Julian of Norwich

This morning, I awoke from a long night’s sleep, feeling drained of energy and as though I could slumber forever.

“Would you like to come for a walk with me?” said Annie. Her voice was grace, giving me the opportunity and the purpose for movement that I would not have possessed on my own. I climbed my way out of bed, beyond the mountains of pillows I surround myself with when I sleep, and mere moments later found myself walking in sandals through the soft desert sand. We walked toward the West and talked about our future, where we wanted to be, what we hoped for. It was lovely.

Having been in Italy several days ago, we had become accustomed to walking long distances, and without thinking about it, we realized after a while that we had walked further than we ever had on any other walk since we’ve lived here. Amazing how your tolerance for things increases with just a simple change and a little bit of effort. I thought back to times not too long ago when this walk would have had me out of breath, and all I felt in this moment was peace.

After our walk, I began shoveling dirt into a wheelbarrow to make a berm that would protect our house from flooding so badly during future rains. I’d been meaning to do this for a year and a half, but it took me until this moment to finally get started. Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow, I moved earth from one place to another and felt my muscles ache. I thought about the ancient buildings, the massive cathedrals that we had seen in Italy, and imagined men moving earth and stone a thousand years ago to do jobs much bigger than this. It made my task feel so small, and when I wanted to give up, I remembered the effort that must have made the great monuments from the past that inspire and move us today. My aches felt quite small at the thought, and I became less concerned with them.

Over the past several months, I’d mostly forgotten my typical spiritual practice. I hadn’t been chanting, hadn’t been meditating, nor was I reading spiritual books and scriptures like I had previously been doing. Today though, I felt “awake,” so I turned on some spiritual music by Krishna Das and continued moving dirt.

The first few barrows full of dirt, I thought about how little energy I had. I thought about people who I’d felt wronged me, what people thought of me, I thought about all of the things that I thought I should have been doing instead. Several wheelbarrows in, however, I thought of nothing. After the third or fourth, I gave up my own will, and my concerns along with it. I thought only of the action, of the movement of the earth, and of the chants playing softly in the background. Pausing for a moment to rest, I sat on my front porch and watched how the landscape around me seemed to morph and move. This happens to me sometimes after a long walk or some self-exertion, like a mini psychedelic trip. The first time I really felt this, I had been walking for hours along a cliff in the California Desert while listening to Deepok Chopra on Oprah’s SuperSoul Podcast. I legitimately felt like I was on mushrooms. This took me back to that moment for a flash, then I found myself rooted in the present. I felt grounded in spirit, I felt alive in my flesh, and I felt – in the midst of it all – close to God.

It suddenly clicked with me as I thirsted for water how effort, throughout time, must have become equated with spirituality and closeness to God. There is something to be said for how certain acts and activities can free up our consciousness to be able to perceive deeper truths about reality. We are made to move and to work, but I don’t think that it’s work itself that allows us to find closeness with the divine, for if that were so then it would be by works and not by faith that we find ourselves in the loving arms that hold the Cosmos in its entirety.

What I notice, however, about such effort, is that it gives the body and mind something else to do, and that the doing frees up our awareness to be able to perceive the spirit. This is why I chant. One of my dear meditation teachers, Jack Kornfield, once described chanting to a curious student as something similar to a toy that you give to the mind the play with so the consciousness can be free of thought. As he put it, we are always living in the spirit, though our constant thoughts keep us unaware. Thoughts can become like a veil over reality that covers the immediate world and keeps us from recognizing the presence of the divine. So when we give our mind a “distraction,” or what in meditation we call an “anchor,” it allows us to come into contact with what’s really here right now. What’s here and now is the spirit, the living presence of God.

As I see and have experienced it, physical labor can be responsible for the very same thing. I think that’s why selfless service is often spoken about in the spiritual world. It brings us closer to awareness of God. Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow, achy muscle after achy muscle, distractions faded away, and I came into contact with what was already present within and around me. It felt like a reward for the hard work, and in a way, it is. In such a way, work can become a ritual, a sacrament; a selfless act of service that makes us aware of the grace that is constantly pulling us toward awareness of the divine.

There is a saying in Buddhism that, “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.” That is to say: there is nowhere to go other than right where you are. There is always work to be done, and that work itself is grace. It also symbolizes to me that there is no separation between the spiritual and the ordinary; that spiritual life does not exempt one from the tasks of daily life. Life is meant to be lived, and through it (not in denial of it) we can become more intimately aware of the spiritual reality in which we are already living. The challenges and tasks of this life, even the ones that cause us to ache, are opportunities to embody our spiritual practice. As such, enlightenment does not allow us to detach fully from daily life, it simply changes how we approach it.

Grace is not just what we get as the result of work, grace is in the work itself. Grace is not just in the work, but in the very call for us to move. Grace is not just in the call to move, but also in the stillness. When I awoke from the stillness, I recognized the stillness as grace and wished to remain in it. When I heard the invitation to go for a walk, that invitation was also the grace that I needed. The walking was the grace. The moving was the grace. The working was the grace. The resting after the working was also the grace.

As Ram Dass, my spiritual teacher, put it, “suffering is grace.” As once stated by one of my favorite mystics of the Middle Ages, Julian of Norwich, “First, there is the fall, and then there is the recovery from the fall. Both are the grace of God.”

Had I at any point been in denial of the present grace in every moment and action, I would have been caught in my reluctancy, and I would have suffered. I would have suffered because of the thought that grace was only in what I wanted, and appeared only as the fulfillment of my preferences. I would have blinded and veiled myself to being able to see that grace was also in the task, and beyond what I thought I needed as well. Grace is present in every step of the journey. In seeing this, we can learn to see life and all that surrounds us as a present miracle. When we see that clearly, we may find that we are living in a world that is held together in boundless love.