Is there a richer and stranger idea in the world than grace? Only love, grace’s cousin, grace’s summer pelt.

We think of grace arriving like an ambulance, a just-in-time delivery, an invisible divine cavalry cresting a hill of troubles, a bolt of jazz from the glittering horn of the Creator, but maybe it lives in us and is activated by illness of the spirit. Maybe it’s stitched into our DNA, a fifth ingredient in the deoxyribonucleic-acid soup.

~ Brian Doyle