The Grace Card

Who knew?! 
April 2nd is Reconciliation Day  

In 1989, newspaper columnist Ann Landers promoted April 2nd as Reconciliation Day. A designated day for mending fences. Dedicating an annual article, Ann encouraged readers to patch relationships, make amends, and remember that life is too short to hold a grudge between those we love. People responded to this column by the thousands. Every year.

What better way to call in the new season, to begin again and remeber things we know. Like loving well and forgiving easily are, at the end of the day, what every spiritual tradition tells us should be the measure of our success. How forgivness, no matter how we convince ourselves otherwise, brings relief, redemption, grace. So, go ahead, play the grace card. It can be a beautiful thing.

If you want to see brave, look at those who can forgive.

                                                              ~Bahagavad Gita

Here Comes the Sun

Happy Equinox!! A little springtime inspiration by Wendell Berry:

A Purification

At the start of spring
I open a trench in the ground.
I put into it
the winter’s accumulation of paper,
pages I do not want to read again,
useless words, fragments, errors.
And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the sun,
growth of the ground,
finished with one of their journeys.
To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees,
I confess my sins:
that I have not been happy enough,
considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise;
have been inattentive to wonders;
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body,
I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark,
the deathless earth.
Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.
(From Wendell Berry, Collected Poems: 1957-1982)