A Poem: Grace as a Well

I think of grace as a well,
a lake fed by underground springs,
and we need not wait for death
to dive in.

We can be submerged now,
death is simply a lifting of feet
from the bottom,
a floating into the blue beyond.

And grace here now
is how we hide from the world,
cannot be hurt,
within grace’s coverage.

How we can find the strength to love,
to forget injuries,
when the weight of water
softens blows.

This protective grace,
how we embrace the world,
that anyone stepping into our space,
for good or ill are cushioned,
falling into love.

The type of love we’re all called to,
surrounding and filling us,
that anything we give now
is simply an outpouring.

How we walk on the earth then
all grace, and dripping wet.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
January 2022

‘It is possible, and perhaps this is what makes the cross so central to the Christian tradition, is the great revelation of the path of self transformation, in that in and through the very pain, and the very cruelty, and the very undoing, is the manifestation of a great grace.

So there then we might say that there is an understanding of a stillness born of humility which is most paradoxical to the ego, a stillness of being brought to the edge of oneself, to apparent nothingness, in and through that nothingness into fulness beyond what one can comprehend.’
~ James Finley