“Not true! Not true! That’s wrong!” I imagined a scientist looking at a formula he or she knew so well and suddenly seeing the flaw and slaps his forehead. The familiar can blind us so. The gentle phrase “there but for the grace of God go I” had walked so softly across my heart only to explode into the slapped forehead of “That’s wrong!”

Whitman and other poets, mystics and saints all saw and see it today- the oneness of all life.  Jesus separates the “faithful” from the “unfaithful” by the simple edict that whatever they had done or not done “to the least” they had done or not done to him – fed, clothed, nurtured and loved. It was not what they did or do for him but what they did or didn’t do for others. A deluge of poems, bits of wisdom came crashing into my mind. More importantly, into my heart. It is not “there but for the grace of God go I”!  That is a prayer of relief and maybe even gratitude. But if we heed the call of Love, the Divine creator, the unity of all life and Life, rather than a prayer of relief or gratitude, our eyes and hearts would flood with compassion and tears as our arms stretched out and our legs propel us forward to any and all crying out “There with the grace of God go I!”

I am the pollution. I am the reclamation. My skin is a rainbow of colors. I am all that is perceived as “good.” I am all that is perceived as “evil.” And when I truly own that, when I allow all walls within my mind and heart to fall, I become the intended creation of Love AND compassion in motion.

Tonight is a human construct. Nature, suffering, hope, and joy have no calendars. On this eve of a new calendar, I look out at the world and see myself. And that is grace.