On "Grace Notes"

I still can't believe that I've joined the blogosphere.  It's something I resisted for so long, for reasons that really don't matter right now and that obviously didn't hold persuasive power for very long. 

I will note one reason, though:  it was hard for me to figure out what this blog would be about.  I wanted my blog entries to have some kind of unifying, central theme, but I couldn't figure it out.  I thought about some of my friends' blogs:  one has a blog about his life as a Jesuit, and another has a blog about her ventures into cooking (a la Julia and Julia).  Another has a blog about his "random thoughts"--unified by their nature as "random."  What would be the common thread running through my writing? 

For a while, I thought I'd focus on my experiences as a new parent over the past year and a half.  In fact, I have already written (privately) 30+ memoir-ish pages on it, and surely, this blog will include perhaps several reflections on it.  But honestly, to focus only on that would limit me too much.  I wanted something a bit more global.  Further, being a mother is obviously a huge part of my identity--but it's taken me suprisingly long to be able to affirm confidently that it isn't the whole of me. 
A few years ago, I attended a writers' workshop with the novelist and spiritual writer Nora Gallagher, who suggested that if you write something, say a paragraph or a whole paper, your reader should be able to sum up what you've written in one word. "Oh, that piece is about aging." "This one is about betrayal." Perhaps that's a bit reductive, but it's helpful, I think, in keeping writers focused. When I sat down to write my first blog entry, I still hadn't determined what my one word would be. And maybe I shouldn't at all, I thought; maybe it would just emerge over time. But upon finishing my entry, I asked myself the question, "What is this entry about?' On one level, the first (and even second) entry was about miscarriage. But I am certainly not writing an entire blog about that! On another level, the entry was about grace.   

One theological definition of grace is that it's the "freely-given, unmerited love of God."  But these words need a lot of explanation, and frankly (and sadly) the word God scares a lot of people.  Here is what I think these words are getting at, though:

Grace is about the possibility of life after suffering, loss, even death--Christians call this resurrection, and they see it as an existential experience, not just a comment on what happens after we literally die. 

Grace is about the possibility of genuine and sustained personal and social change. 

Grace is about the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation. 

Grace is about the presence and power of love that knows no limits. 

I'd like to think that my blog entries will be about all of these things--hence, grace notes.  Obviously, the above are statements of hope, and it strikes me that this is the task of theology, at least Christian theology:  "to give an account of the hope that is in you..." (1 Peter 3:15). 

We'll see what comes of my account....