Grace

I witnessed a miracle today. My dear cats, Frannie and Sienna, curled up on my bed and took a nap together. This may not seem like much to you, but some miracles have to be explained to appreciate in value.

Cats by nature are societal, that is, they like to figure out ways to be with each other that work for the whole group. They are polite, subtly clear in their communication and generally clean up after themselves. Of course, this process takes time, patience and respect, both among the cats themselves and between the cats and the people with whom they live. Patience is key, especially when a new cat becomes a part of the family . What can sound to human ears like the worst screaming, ranting and raving in the most shrill of voices is really just the whole wheel of life squeaking away.

I’ve understood this scenario for a long time. I’ve been blessed by the love of seven cats in my life, three of whom live with me now, the others in my heart. Each cat, save for the first two, who came to me as sisters, has helped reshape our family via the same process. By observation I estimated that it took about three weeks for a new kitty to become our kitty, give or take a day or two.
But this latest new kitty, Sienna, came to be my girl with a companion, whose name is Bailey. They already knew each other, had already established a relationship. To be frank, I hesitated in bringing two cats into our household at once, for a variety of reasons that can be saved for another time. But, I made the decision to take them as a set. Holding that three week observation firmly in my heart, we now stand about, oh, eighteen months past that point, hence my proclamation of a miracle in our household today. We still have occasional irritations that erupt between any two of my lovely girls, but it seems we have figured out the main points of living together once again.

My point is that grace takes many forms in our lives, including the effort we put into getting along with each other. God is in the details, so I have heard, and in this time and place we like to call the information age, there is no more important place for God to be but right smack in the middle of all that communication. The Bible tells us over and over that what we do for one of God’s people, including ourselves, we do for God, so it would make sense that how we share the our lives with one another is the same as sharing that information with God. I ask you now to pause for a moment and consider the last conversation you had with a colleague, family member or friend. Did you feel like you were communicating with God?

We build the culture one conversation at a time. We contribute who we are, our values, including how much we value ourselves, to the world at large each time we share information, establishing our place in how we see things, how we believe the world works. And we create that reality over and over every day. Bumping into each other’s realities is quite astonishing, especially when those realities don’t quite mesh with our own. It is here that we discover grace, the space that makes us one because we are all apart of God’s Oneness. Civility really isn’t dead, no more so than good manners and treating each other with respect and kindness, those fruits of the Spirit we all love to pick. These are the gifts of grace in action, to give and to receive.

Meanwhile, I am going to go take a nap.