Shoulder Taps

“You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity.  I’ll take grace.  I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it.” Mary Oliver

Have your ever had the experience of receiving a gift from one person, only to feel like maybe there was another giver behind the gesture? Someone who REALLY knew what you needed?  Or maybe you have felt a tap on the shoulder telling you that you need to say or do something right now...because you can’t shake the feeling that (and you may not always articulate it this way) you know you are, in that split second, meant to be grace for someone else.  I think these are gifts from the divine and they are there for the taking.  Grace, like energy, is not meant to stop with us, but to move through us. It is easy enough to think of times when we are moved with heated emotion like anger or defensiveness...our buttons are pushed and we respond instinctively, ready to shoot off our mouths like the weapons they are.  But, we can also learn to react when we are moved in other ways.  Times when we notice someone struggling or being harmed in some way. Imagine if you simply said a quiet blessing over the person standing in front of you at the grocery store?  Imagine knowing someone did that for you.  I know that I have been the beneficiary of such invisible graces.  I know there are times people could have cursed me but blessed me instead.  The older I get, the more I believe in this kind of subversive power, the more I believe that there is no such thing as coincidence, not one bit. Whatever or whomever we encounter in a given moment can benefit from even the humblest act of grace.  That is the best kind of power and it is there waiting for us to call on it.  Our shoulders are just about midway between the heart and throat chakras, energy centers where we feel and speak our truth.  It may be crucial to listen when Someone or Something taps on them and tries to shake up our little worlds with grace.