“Terror and Grace

We choose to be terrified as we choose to have the grace to deal with it.

I am an old woman. I have been gripped by terror and impotence all my life. Today I realize that grace is not something that descends on you divinely from above to neutralize the terror. Grace is your own ability to have an open mind and to continue to love despite all givens. Grace and terror are ever dancing with one another. One pulls and the other pushes and the battle is never won by either. Flashes of beauty and flashes of darkness. Moments making a life. A ladder (spiral?) that leads to a spherical multi- dimensional multi -faceted entity called self. Grace and terror are like god and the devil. They are intertwined like vines within the tree (self). Grace and terror. Beauty and the beast. Come with birth. It is their calibration that makes your sanity. Their balance. To untangle them is fruitless.

To think them deeply is what I try to do in my painting. But so far I have painted terror alone and grace alone. Never both in their dance. That will be a work to dream of and to aspire to. Maybe I can achieve it in writing or I can achieve it in painting. Or both. I know enough by now to know that my road will become clearer. I know how to begin to think about this. It is in the fullness of the presence of both beauty and beast——-and in the celebration of both that prayer is most sincere and valid. It is in the thorn that we have to thank the rose. But both are one entity. One reality. One god. One human. Love is in realizing both. And in celebrating their dance.

How much control? Full control. Because as you sink you know you have the power to rise. You just have to use it.

Choice. Free will is the ability to calibrate. ”