The sunflowers here are taller than I am, dancing around adobe buildings.
A handwritten cardboard sign on the side of a stone path reads “Snail Crossing.”
Outside this new mountain classroom, a profusion of purple sage. And inside, earnest humans are here to learn how to care for themselves and others through a profoundly helpful and simple process known as G.R.A.C.E.
As I write this to you, the weekend is in full swing, stirring up everything. Fifty of us in person, twenty-five online, feeling inwardly focused, yet expansive, broken open.
This heuristic map called G.R.A.C.E. was devised by Roshi Joan Halifax to help us navigate our inner and outer world with compassion, no matter the context. The steps help us state-shift in the midst of real complexity. It’s wild how useful it is.
Taught twice yearly at Upaya Zen Center, this is my fourth or fifth time taking it, and I’m thankful to have offered intervals of movement to help us embody the teachings. Inviting us to turn our compassion toward ourselves first so we can help others, this process teaches us how to manage and assuage the aggression in our culture, deconstructing habitual and societal structures that keep us from seeing reality, just as it is.
Amidst ambiguity and feelings of insufficiency, we’re learning to allocate our attention intentionally, so we can experience both power and rest.
A page from Being You, with a quote from Roshi Joan Halifax on compassion.
Whether you’re a parent, clinician, educator, or working in any setting of care, whether you’re up-regulated, depleted, or witnessing someone in distress, G.R.A.C.E. is a generative, grounding practice. I’ll share the actual process below, as well as the names and backgrounds of the teachers at the end of this post.
“Maybe G.R.A.C.E is about how we bring into the world something we’ve not yet received for ourselves.”
—Cynda Hylton Rushton, PhD, RN, FAAN, author of Moral Resilience, teacher of G.R.A.C.E., and a personal hero
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G.R.A.C.E., the process.
Gathering your attention, collect yourself. You’re choosing the world you live in by the ways in which you offer your attention both inwardly and outwardly.
Recalling your intention, refine your capacity for compassion for yourself, so you can be of benefit in the way you intend.
Attuning to yourself first, then the situation; practice tracking your own subjectivity as well as what’s happening around you.
Considering what will serve in this moment, drop beneath your education and biases to become more comfortable with ambiguity.
Enacting what will serve ethically, bring skillful means in a discerning way, whether that means action or sometimes, inaction. And then ending, closing the circle of care in the most appropriate fashion.
A brief story to exemplify the efficacy of this process.
A patient in hospice had an ex partner who was not permitted to visit due to his abusive behavior. Walking into her room for my volunteer shift days before she passed, I find him sitting at her side, which is distressing: I recall a warning from her family that he might sneak in to make her sign over the access to her estate. And our patient looks visibly disturbed.
Gathering my attention, I nod my head to calmly acknowledge this guy, seething inwardly, remaining unmoved on the outside. Recalling why I’m here, to voluntarily bring some semblance of presence, I become more grounded in what I need to do. Attuning to myself, I offer myself empathy for how scared I am in this moment, considering what will truly serve. All of this happens in seconds.
Time to act. I pick up my phone to play the patient’s favorite music, and clandestinely text her family to call the hospice office who can get him ushered him away. Within minutes he’s escorted out. G.R.A.C.E. is my ballast.
Used it again today with a fifty-five year old patient as he told me his story; instead of being on the cross-country canoe trip of his life, he’s weeks away from the end of it. Smiling and crying as he tells me all of this, I’m practicing G.R.A.C.E. within myself, so I can appropriately support his peacefulness.
Especially as our attentional field is being chronically fragmented, allocating our attention to the appropriate response in this calm, alert way is vital.
To consider:
In what context might this process serve you right now?
What aspect of it feels most elusive?
A note in closing. When my son’s dad and I split more than a dozen years ago, the tattoo of the first letter of his name was asking to be transformed. The lowercase “a” on my wrist became a word, on the suggestion from a best friend. Can you guess?
Now I realize why all these years I’ve had this time-blurred, imperfect reminder of grace.
Photograph by Shannon Ryan, Upaya Zen Center
Our teachers, from left to right:
Cynda H. Rushton, PhD, RN, FAAN, author of Moral Resilience (a must-read if you’re serving others), is the Bunting Professor of Clinical Ethics at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and School of Nursing, co-chairing the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Ethics Committee and Consultation Service. She’s the force behind the ethics component of this program.
Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D. is a Buddhist teacher, Founder and Abbot of Upaya Zen Center, a social activist and pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. Her books include The Human Encounter with Death, The Fruitful Darkness (a personal favorite), Being with Dying, Standing at the Edge, children’s book Sophie Learns to Be Brave, and her latest project, In a Moment, In a Breath.
Anthony Back, MD, Director of Palliative Care at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Professor of Oncology at the University of Washington, is also a facilitator of therapeutic psychedelic retreats for the terminally ill.
Wendy Lau, MD is an Emergency Medicine and Addiction Medicine physician, author of Inner Practice of Medicine, is the co-director of Upaya’s Nomads Clinic providing treatments and services in remote, high-altitude villages of Himalayan Nepal.
Elena, I don’t know if you read Richard Rohr’s reflections, but he also wrote about grace today. Here’s what he said:
“But grace is also contagious. An act of kindness inspires another act of kindness… A single act of forgiveness can feel like it heals the world. Grace begets grace. Love rubs off on those who are loved…”
I think this kind of grace is capable of offering redemption, healing, and a renewed sense of purpose. That’s exactly what I found in your post today.
Thank you, also, for the gift subscription you offered me. I will go back and read everything I missed. Sending blessings.
I have been having a nudge towards this program, and then I read your post on it. Thank you for sharing this.