Grace and Action

It is often said that there is action and grace as two polarities of spirituality.

Action would then be the movement initiated to pierce the veil of illusion and approach reality. It would then correspond to practice in the sense we understand it in Zen.

Grace would be divine action in the broadest possible sense, because nothing is broader than God.

Everything we can think about God is never God.
Language is inadequate to encapsulate God.

Also, it is impossible to speak of God, and ultimately, silence is always the realm of wisdom to which we are always called. Should we reconcile these two poles?

Should we choose sides?

Is it not only in our discourses and perceptions that they are opposed?

Are there really two poles?

If we expand, (if we make room for the Spirit)

Perhaps everything we mean by ‘grace’ is divine action.

And everything we think of as action, practice, is in reality a deeper grace, a space we create for ourselves, programmed from the deepest layers to those where we set ourselves in motion, those where practice is expressed.

All our setting in motion, our practices, our actions would then be a profound grace.

Thus, the answer to the question: where does this action, this setting in motion, this practice come from?

Is the same as the answers to the question of where grace comes from…

And, in the same way that we could conclude that everything is practice, we can now affirm, as a perfectly substitutable alternative to this conclusion, that everything is grace.

©FJ May 2025
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