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Author Insight
Amazing Grace
In one of her memoirs, “Wrinkle in Time” author Madeline L’Engle jokes about the Old Testament prophets who looked up to the sky and shouted to God, “You want me to do what!?” I’ve lost track of the number of times over the years that I’ve found myself echoing those reluctant prophets. Perhaps one of the most challenging was in May 2019 when, unable to pay my rent and days away from eviction, that call from on high urged me to sell off what little I owned, pack the rest, along my dog, into my car and take off for parts unknown and unknowable. To be clear, that higher call, when it comes, doesn’t derive from some white-bearded, white-robed gentleman commanding the universe from some celestial perch. It is, as I put it in my “Acts of Surrender” memoir, “an infinite indwelling presence that is simultaneously my wisest aspect and the ineffable universality that is the sum of all that is.” I could call it God or by any of a dozen other names. Any name, though, would be little more than an arbitrary label for a spirit and energy that lies beyond my mind’s still-limited capacity to encompass…a spirit and energy I recognize to be wiser than the human me. That same higher wisdom had directed me to Portland seventeen months earlier; it was now directing me to leave…with no income, no credit and only enough cash for, maybe, two weeks. How would I manage?
Book Excerpt
Pilgrimage
It turns out that grace truly is amazing. To recap what I wrote on June 19, I had just learned that the credit card I have been using for my accommodations on this journey was nearly maxed out. At the time, I believed I had enough hotel reward points for one free night. I didn’t know how I would manage beyond that.
Well, like the miracle of the Hanukkah story where oil sufficient for a single night miraculously lasted for eight nights, my reward points have also miraculously stretched themselves.
That evening, I discovered I had enough points for not one free night, but two. The next morning, in chatting with an agent at the rewards call center about a different issue, I learned about a new promotion, which immediately netted me enough additional points for two more free nights. And that evening, my first freebie, I had so many problems with the room that the manager refunded me the points I had used to pay for it. Within twenty-four hours, my points had multiplied enough to score me as many five free nights.
My miracle may not have been as dramatic as the one in the Hanukkah story; it was miracle enough for me.
I may not know how I’m going to sustain this journey into another month, but thanks to the miracle of amazing grace, it looks like I’m going to make it through this one. If I have learned anything on the greater Fool’s Journey that is my life, it’s that tomorrow has a way of taking care of itself. So I’ll do my (imperfect) best not to worry.
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