grace

 

"Creation itself, the natural world, already believes the gospel and lives the pattern of death and resurrection, even if unknowingly. The natural world believes in necessary suffering as the very cycle of life. Just observe the daily dying of the sun so all things on this planet can live. The total change of the seasons. The plants and trees along with it. The violent world of animal predators and prey. Necessary suffering goes on every day, seemingly without question. As I write this in the deserts of Arizona, I just read that only one saguaro cactus seed out of a quarter of a million seeds ever makes it to even early maturity and even fewer after that. Most of nature seems to totally accept major loss, gross inefficiency, mass extinction and short lifespans as the price of life at all. Feeling that sadness and even its full absurdity ironically pulls us into the general dance, the unified field, and ironic and deep gratitude for what is given, with no necessity, and so gratuitously. All beauty is gratuitous. So whom can we blame when it seems to be taken away? Grace seems to be at the foundation of everything."

– Richard Rohr