Grace

Been doing some thinking today.  My walk has been slow, because my right calf/ankle is sore, so been taking it easy and frequent breaks to rest it. But thinking about grace and my walk with god. I see a lot of churches with grace in their names, and I guess that was my spark. I have lived most of my life without its presence, and that was fine. I was agnostic before the walk. Note that I said agnostic versus atheist. Agnostic is about not knowing versus not believing. But in my world, there was a set of checks and balances, a rhythm of receiving and returning. You buy me dinner, and I will buy yours the next time around. But the last few years I've been short on friends because I removed myself from the world to live in my solitary hole. So even the tit for tat was infrequent. With family you automatically get grace, or at least in mine. The same for friends and loved ones. Getting grace from complete strangers is in my experience a rarity. But here I am now on this walk, and not only have my friends and family pitched in to keep this journey alive and afloat. But complete strangers. Whether it's to donate towards the walk or because I appear homeless  (which I suppose in the strictest sense I am), it doesn't matter, because the giving is the important part. Giving when there is no motive but to make someone's life better. Then there's god's grace. Praying, I've asked for safety, to keep animals from my path, I've asked for money, I've asked for the sun to come out, and I've asked to stay dry; and every time my prayer was answered. Coming from a life of hoping, to a life of getting what I ask for, is a completely foreign idea. It's that grace from god, that gives me hope, joy, and freedom to enjoy the walk where I would normally dispair.  And because I've been given grace, I in turn feel the imperative to grant it. I guess it's paying it forward.  It makes me want to be less judgemental,  and more kind. More the kind of person I want to be.