Walk Your Walk of Lament on a Path of Praise

Meditations by Ian White Maher: Praise | Gratitude | Joy | Transformation

We suffer from a crisis of grace. We suffer from the belief that there is just not enough love for us, for all of us, like there is some sort of grace scarcity. So we hoard and act selfishly believing we will starve tomorrow if we feed those who are starving today. And the tighter we grow and the harder we grow the more suffering we see and the scarcer love appears. This, in turn, leads to a scarcity of praise because when grace is scarce so is joy. But there is no shortage of grace, there is no shortage of love. It is like going to the beach and worrying that there won’t be enough sun for everyone. Rilke writes “walk your walk of lament on a path of praise.” My great hope is that we become known as a people who stand in the world witnessing for justice but doing so from a place of praise. The world is in such terrible trouble, but if we allow the song of creation to come through us we will be changed by it and others will be changed by it. It is through acts of witness that we will grow ever closer to the understanding of ourselves as Gaia, the understanding that grace flows through every atom of our being.