You Lucky Thing
This morning I was thinking about luck. There's this movie preview where this woman is sitting with a friend and they are watching her husband, who is a ways away, talking on his phone and the friend says, "you got really lucky" (referring to the husband) and the woman says, "yeah, I did."
What is luck anyway? I know Oprah or somebody says it's when "preparation meets opportunity." I used to really like that, but I'm not sure that I do anymore. Because I think we are sometimes "lucky" when we do nothing at all to deserve it: showing up at the grocery store when it's free soft serve day, finding a quarter on the street, getting to the stop just before the bus pulls away. People have good luck who aren't prepared at all, who don't do anything good. Sometimes really good, prepared people have bad luck: a bird poops on you, you step in gum, you forget to turn on your alarm and wake up late.
I've been thinking about grace lately too. I do not understand grace, but I know that I want it. To me, it seems like maybe what we call luck is really a form of grace. We don't deserve it, we don't see it coming, sometimes it shows up when we don't even know we need it--but it saves our patooshes and makes things more bearable. Maybe I'm mistaking grace for "tender mercies," but right now I'll keep calling it grace.
You know in the spring when blossoms are flying everywhere? Or that white cottony fluff is floating around and it gets on your car and stuck in your hair and it just seems to kind of levitate? I think grace is kind of like the cotton fluff, but it's not around just at one time of the year. It's always there, flying around and hitting you right in the face sometimes. And it hits everybody in the face, the elbow, behind the ear. Everybody gets some cotton fluff.
Brian Doyle has an essay called, "Grace Notes." I recommend it.
What is luck anyway? I know Oprah or somebody says it's when "preparation meets opportunity." I used to really like that, but I'm not sure that I do anymore. Because I think we are sometimes "lucky" when we do nothing at all to deserve it: showing up at the grocery store when it's free soft serve day, finding a quarter on the street, getting to the stop just before the bus pulls away. People have good luck who aren't prepared at all, who don't do anything good. Sometimes really good, prepared people have bad luck: a bird poops on you, you step in gum, you forget to turn on your alarm and wake up late.
I've been thinking about grace lately too. I do not understand grace, but I know that I want it. To me, it seems like maybe what we call luck is really a form of grace. We don't deserve it, we don't see it coming, sometimes it shows up when we don't even know we need it--but it saves our patooshes and makes things more bearable. Maybe I'm mistaking grace for "tender mercies," but right now I'll keep calling it grace.
You know in the spring when blossoms are flying everywhere? Or that white cottony fluff is floating around and it gets on your car and stuck in your hair and it just seems to kind of levitate? I think grace is kind of like the cotton fluff, but it's not around just at one time of the year. It's always there, flying around and hitting you right in the face sometimes. And it hits everybody in the face, the elbow, behind the ear. Everybody gets some cotton fluff.
Brian Doyle has an essay called, "Grace Notes." I recommend it.
posted by Sylvia Louise at
3:46 PM
2 Comments:
Sometimes it drives me crazy to write something lovely, and to have no one say, amen. So, amen. I read this. I still want a puppy.
I vascillate (sp?) between believing that grace is really bigger and more abundant than I previously thought, or more scarce than I previously thought. I think that belief is often associated with my present state of sin. :0
Amen! Love the cotton fluff in the elbow.
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