In each of the last four years of Pause messages, I’ve ended the year with reflections on one key word. Peace, joy, love and hope have all taken a turn in the spotlight.

As an unsettling 2008 winds to a bumpy close, I’d like to invite you to focus on yet another powerful concept: grace.

Grace is often defined with words like elegance, beauty, charm. But, to me, those are its more superficial expressions.  

At a deeper level, grace is more about connecting to life’s richest undercurrents, smoothing life’s rough patches, and making life’s journey easier for ourselves and for those with whom we travel. In that light, grace is more about kindness and compassion.

I hope you enjoy reflecting on a few of my favorite quotes on grace. May you find many moments of grace and ease in the days and months that lie ahead.

Warmest wishes from my family to yours, for a peaceful year end and a prosperous and grace-filled 2009, Pat

• Grace isn’t a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It’s a way to live. – Jacqueline Winspear
• I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.  – Anne lamott 
• For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. – Wendell Berry
• The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances. – Aristotle
• When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age. – Victor Hugo
• Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. – Colossians 4:6
• I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted. – Og Mandino
• God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. – Reinhold Niebuhr
• Dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not and to believe in your own individuality. – Henri-Frédéric Amiel
• There but for the grace of God go I. – John Bradford
• Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. you only need a heart full of grace. a soul generated by love. –  Martin Luther King Jr.
• That is the saving grace of humour, if you fail no one is laughing at you.  – A. Whitney Brown
• Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude. – Denis Waitley
• Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence. – Og Mandino
• Gracefulness has been defined to be the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul. – William Hazlitt
• Grace is available for each of us every day – our spiritual daily bread – but we’ve got to remember to ask for it with a grateful heart and not worry about whether there will be enough for tomorrow. – Sarah Ban Breathnach
• Beauty and grace command the world. –  Park Benjamin
• In a moment of grace, we can grasp eternity in the palm of our hand. This is the gift given to creative individuals who can identify with the mysteries of life through art. –  Marcel Marceau
• Our lives are of great worth if we accept with good grace the situation Providence places us in, and go on living lovingly. – Takashi Nagai
• The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail. –  Ramakrisha
• What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it create some semblance of order. – Katherine Paterson
• It is the nature of grace always to fill spaces that have been empty. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• This is what I have learned: Within the sorrow, there is grace. When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open. – Wayne Muller
• Do you know that the ready concession of minor points is a part of the grace of life? – Henry Harland
• The accumulation of small, optimistic acts produces quality in our culture and in our life. Our culture resonates in tense times to individual acts of grace. – Jennifer James