Grace - A Visual Metaphor

"Should've been dead on a Sunday mornin' banging my head, no time for mournin', ain't got no time...ain't got no time..." So sang Creed, one of the most deplorable bands to crawl out of that primordial ooze known as Christian rock. One more paper to go, one project to work on, one assignment, one exam, "one love," sang Bob Marley. Subconsciously I may have been hoping to brake an arm to postpone the apocalyptic moment of my paper's due date tomorrow.

Navigating the past few days has been tricky. At times situations have loomed so large in my vision as to coax a volcanic paroxysm to just beneath the surface like a noxious Mt Vesuvius on the tea cups at Disneyland. Change is like a deep, deep sleeper, sometimes it takes unkind measures to rupture complacency bordering on violence. Check check check this quote from American novelist (and my new favorite female/overall authors):

"Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them."

Grace cannot work within a closed system, it destabilizes the old in order to make something new. Sometimes nothing short of demolition (though I don't think it happens that way too often). Another guy I like compared grace to circumcision; you have to cut something to open it up to exteriority. It's been one of those weeks which stands as the culmination of waves and waves and wind in time breaking on the shore and sweeping it's edges, transforming and marring the shoreline. It's been painful to wrap my head around and then there's the process of accepting the new, which is often an acceptance of impotence and a move from giving answers and making demands to being asked and responding with further questions. To break-down isn't only to negate but to open oneself up to something coming. Grace scares me because it takes (and people in general, I think) some violence to make itself known and the pain of surgery afterwards can be felt for some time and the mind would subdue the very pain which heralds healing, unable to distinguish it from the pain that portends death. Grace is a paper I agonize over for weeks to produce a product I would just as soon scrap were the deadline not upon me, which challenges me and shakes my confidence in analysis and subpoenas my assumed literary acumen which I hold as central to my identity. It calls in to question my assessments of everything around me in ways and to a severity which is difficult for me to convincingly relate, it cuts me open so it can make its way into a system which has been too closed. Mercy is the face of my niece, a kiss on the cheek, a second wind, an understanding teacher, a good book which speaks of grace so as to help one grasp it before it must make an intrusion to steal whatever we happen to be holding most dear.