Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry, an umbilical spot of grace where we were first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues Peace. To know this spot of inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. We each live in the midst of ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.
Only my footsteps in the snow,
Only the glow of my fire,
Only a choir of wind to sing the benediction.
But I feast on memories
In a holy place.
It has been so long since I have heard my own voice
It startles me
When I say the grace.
May all things lost, apart, alone
Find some small shelter of their own.