Coaching as Instrument: Grace, Reconciliation and Compassion

This Week's Attunement 

"Remember, reconciliation and living with compassion does not mean we have to personally repair every difficulty in our extended family and community. Compassion is a state of heart, not co-dependence. In true compassion, we do not lose our own self-respect or sacrifice ourselves blindly for others. Compassion is a circle that encompasses all beings, including ourselves."
— Jack Kornfield

Near the end of each year and the beginning of a new one, I take stock of my relationships, the ones I'd like to maintain, the ones I'd like to create, the ones I'd like to improve, patch up and repair. It's this last category that often gives me pause. 

What am I going to do differently? Would my doing something differently even make a difference? Is it even worth trying? What I realize when I read this quote from Jack Kornfield, is that I tend to put all of the responsibility for the relationship onto myself. And I'll tend to believe that if only I could change, everything would be different. And what his words encourage within me is the notion that I can "intend" to reconcile and to hold myself and the other with love and compassion.  

In fact, that's really all I can do. I can't reconcile for both of us. I can only do my part with intention, love, and compassion. And maybe that's enough.

What's Inspiring Me
So I can continue to do what I do and inspire my clients as well

  “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 many years, I thought of grace only as something I didn't possess. I thought of grace as something that's found on a ballroom dance floor or among royalty or runway models. Even the lyrics to the Christian hymn, Amazing Grace, didn't inform my understanding of an altogether different type of grace. Grace was just a word in a church song repeated so often its meaning was lost.

Even when I worked at a credit card company and learned more than I ever wanted to about "grace periods," I only understood grace as a way you carried yourself or a prayer you offered before a meal, not as something one person bestows upon another. It's only been in the last few years that I've embraced another way of defining and experiencing grace. Now, I understand another, more healing definition of grace, like a gift, perhaps even one we feel we don't deserve. When I reflect upon the times in my life I've benefitted from the grace of another, I experience a profound sense of love and gratitude. I feel changed by it. Grace was like an unexpected, unjustified forgiveness that eased the burden of my shame. Grace was healing for me. So, in this culture of "calling out others" may we be gracious instead and extend the mystery of grace a little further.