One-hundred-times-a-day Grace

Out the kitchen window the sky rolls out. Apple blossoms fill the orchard. The morning dove warms her bluing hope. I can hear Him, what He is telling the whole world and even me here: this is for you. The lover’s smile in the morning, the child’s laughter down the slide, the elder’s eyes at eventide: this is for you. And the earth under your feet, the rain over your face upturned, the stars spinning all round you in the brazen glory: this is for you, you, you. These are for you — gifts — these are for you — grace — these are for you — God, so count the ways He loves, a thousand, more, never stop, that when you wake in the morning you can’t help turn humbly to the east, unfold your hand to the heavens, and though you tremble and though you wonder, though the world is ugly, it is beautiful and you can slow and you can trust and you can receive each moment as grace. Eucharisteo. Eucharisteo. Eucharisteo.

And the moment opens unexpectedly. I’m in the cemetery kneeling, tracing the only five letters carved deep in that slab of granite laid down in the dirt.

“A-I-M-E-E.” Loved one.

I remember her silken hair. I still don’t know why He took her. I don’t know why her children don’t run free on spring days with mine, laugh with my sister’s. Don’t know why my parents’ hearts were left to weep, eroding all away. Though I cry, this I know: God is always good and I am always loved and eucharisteo has made me my truest self, “full of grace.” Doesn’t eucharisteo rename all God’s children their truest name.

“Loved one.”

Me, my dad, my mama, all the children, all the broken ones, all the world, He sings us safe with the refrain of our name, “Loved one.”

In the window next to the stove, the porcelain dove soars. In the sill a framed print of Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus invites. How many times a day do I look at this print in my kitchen and return to that sacred moment of soul communion in a still gallery? How many times a day do I again reach to embrace Him in communion thanks? It comes again now like it does every day, what I had read after I had already counted thousands of gifts: that this discipline of counting graces is as old as God’s people themselves, the seriously devout Jews of today still giving thanks to God one hundred times a day. The words of the rabbis have been impressed deep into my skin, my being, their words beckoning the way into joy:

My gratitude journal is lying open on its permanent home on the counter, enumerating moments, making a ledger of His love. It is G. K. Chesterton who encapsulated the truth of my numbering life: “The greatest of poems is an inventory.”^b I grin happy in the midst. No, I’ll never stop the counting, never cease transcribing the ballad of the world, the rhyme of His heart. He and I, a couplet. Count one thousand gifts, bless the Holy One one hundred times a day, commune with His presence filling the laundry room, the kitchen, the hospital, the graveyard, the highways and byways and workways and all the blazing starways, His presence filling me.

This is what it means to fully live.

Father God, if devout Jews thank You one hundred times a day — might I thank You one thousand times in a lifetime? Might I begin anew today? Because when we’ve been with You ten thousand years, we’ll have no less years to sing Your thanks than when we’ve first begun. May my extravagant practice begin now. Bless the Lord, O my soul — because this is what blesses the soul.