On Grace Uncreated

For Thou art not divided, O Undivided Light —

yet Thou dost give Thyself, and still retain Thyself,

pouring forth without diminishment,

as the sun pours light upon the blind man's face

and loses nothing of its fire.

Thou art Essence beyond all essence,

dwelling in darkness unapproachable —

yet the darkness is not dark to Thee,

and in Thy darkness Thou dost shine

with energies that are not less than Thou,

yet are not all of Thee that is.

This is the mystery that broke me open, Lord:

that Thy grace is not a thing Thou sendest down

like rain from some removed and distant throne —

it is Thyself, going forth from Thyself,

remaining what Thou art,

becoming the light by which I see the Light.

How then is grace undeserved?

Because I did not make the sun.

Because I did not fashion mine own eyes.

Because the capacity to receive Thee

was itself Thy gift before I knew to ask —

Thou wert calling before I had a mouth to answer,

and my turning toward Thee

was itself already Thee, turning me.

And yet — and here my tongue grows clumsy, Lord,

and here the Latin fails me, and all tongues fail —

Thou dost not force the eye to open.

The energies stand at the door and knock.

They flood the valley but do not compel the thirsty man to drink.

So is grace then reserved for the worthy?

Not for the worthy — but for the willing.

And even the willing was Thy work in me.

Not because Thou hast made me other than free —

but because freedom rightly understood

is not the power to refuse Thee finally,

but the power to become what I was made to be:

a creature capable of God,

a vessel formed for deification,

a burning bush that need not be consumed.

O Lord, my Lord —

Augustine wept in gardens.

I have wept in the desert of my own uncleansed nous,

that inner eye grown dim with passion's dust,

unable to behold what was always blazing before it.

And yet Thy grace did not wait for my purity.

It waited only for my poverty —

for the moment I ceased to be full of myself

and became, at last, an emptiness shaped like prayer.

Then didst Thou enter — not from outside only,

but from a within more inward than my inwardness,

the very Ground of my ground,

the Life beneath my life,

more intimate to me than my own breath

and yet more other than the farthest star.

This is Thy grace: uncreated, yet communicated.

Unearned, yet not withheld from those who hunger.

Free, and freely given —

and in the giving, making free

all those who dare to receive it.

O Lord, how can I understand Thy grace?

I cannot.

But I can be undone by it.

I can be remade within it.

I can become, by participation,

what Thou art by nature —

not God as Thou art God,

but god as Thou hast willed to make me:

lit from within by Light that had no beginning,

and shall have no end,

and calls my name

even now,

even here,

even this.