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Grabbing Grace and Giving It a Shake

(A brief reflection presented at this morning’s service at my Unitarian Universalist church on the month’s theme of “Grace At the End.”)
It was my great privilege to accompany two people to their deaths from Lou Gehrig’s disease in my years as a Hospice volunteer. Their temperaments and response to their disease couldn’t have been more different.

Diane approached it with a kind of equanimity and a retained sparkle in her eyes, which were about the only body parts she could move anymore as the disease robbed her of all other bodily function in the surpassingly cruel way that it does.

Mike fought it all the way, refusing to go gently into that night, sticking up for himself to God and vigorously dissenting from the fate that would spiral him down to death at not even 40 years old, father to two young children.

The two of them put me in mind of that book title: “Grit and Grace.” Mike the grittie...

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