On Grace

Essay 23

I wrote about grace when I was about to leave London, and then once again after I’d lost it. It bugs me because I’m an atheist — though I know what people make exists — to feel so strongly that I live in grace, but I do. And I know because I know when I’ve lost it. I see the people who crave it in churches and on trips, and wave them over.

It started a few years ago, maybe because of that year’s big dark, that I learnt I can spot people who have the light. Some people live among us who radiate, and they rotate the world in new directions. I move with an ease myself — there is a ball among men when the lights are on, a waltz to brighter flames. And I know that I can make grace too, pass it around like a tray of cake, people touch it to their lips and shine like gold. And I know the deep nights that unfold without grace, the faces distorted in the empty trays, the cracks with nothing but black to hollow through.

It is the body that sees the golden street-map and feels which light steps to follow through. I’d like to paint it to explain you, its texture and its temperature alight! The best things in life are born out of contrasts, chiaro, scuro — our most important discoveries are made in absentia, and stay possessed with the pleasures of their reward.