Extend

I'm still getting used to the idea that most people are able to extend grace because they have been given grace.

Yesterday, my sister showed up at my house in tears, hurting. Blistered by the tediousness of life and the salt of unkindness rubbed into the wound. The people surrounding her for the next nine months live in a paradigm of law. The system bends for no one. People forget how to extend grace or even a sliver of kindness when all they're handed is the law and its consequences.

I know. I was there both as a student and as faculty. It's easy to get caught up in the beauty of a black and white world. I found myself addressing every slight misdemeanor, anything that bordered on gray. I forgot how to extend grace. My peers seldom expressed it to each other, let alone to a student. It just wasn't done. God is holy. He is black and white. Banish the gray! became the unspoken motto. War rhetoric surfaced in our conversations.

Step outside the paradigm of the law to look inside. It's all so confusing. What's the big fuss over? Mountains arising from molehills. Redwoods being ignored in favor of splinters.

Oh, to step back from it all. Look up. Look around. Breathe in the multicolored breath of grace.