August: Grace Follows Awkward
At first blush, this spell could be mistaken for a motivational poster about being a beginner and eventually finding mastery. Grace follows awkward— practice makes perfect; fake it till you make it, etc. But that is a small sliver of what this spell contains. It’s not that grace follows to replace awkwardness, but to embrace it. These states cycle with each other, as bound together as love and loss.
With this spell, we center the profound clumsiness and beauty that are both inherent to being alive. These dynamic cranes embody our spell, at once gorgeous and awkward creatures, flickering between the ridiculous and sublime with each whap of their giant wings.
Working With this Spell
To feel awkward is to feel oneself judged and found lacking. Whether the judgment comes from inside or out, it can affect our whole body. Feelings of shame and embarrassment can lower our heads and our gaze and weigh heavy on our chest and shoulders. These feelings also shut down our drive to learn new things, behave in new ways, and to relax into our instincts. To embrace our innate awkwardness requires courage, and that courage can come from grace.
There are many ways of thinking about grace, but the definition we offer you is an unearned gift of love and generosity. We can’t demand grace, from ourselves or from others. There’s no way to claim we deserve it. Grace visits us in the lifting of mood and a shifting of perspective. Grace comes as a moment of longed-for inspiration and in the healing of a relationship. There is no formula for grace, no way to make it happen the same way again—we can only accept the gift.
To work with this spell, allow for the awkward. Notice it in yourself and others and slow down the process of judging it. Perhaps even reverse that process of judgment to explore what kind of opening is there. So many unexpected things happen If we choose not to judge what we see or feel, but be present to it instead. Another way of experimenting with this spell would be to study the ways you limit yourself, your movements, and your actions. See if you can start to access the worlds you deny yourself for fear of showing up in them as awkward.
This Month
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