Spot Of Grace
Remarkable Stories of How You Do Make a Difference
B Y   D A W N A   M A R K O V A   P h D

How Do You Call Yourself
When You Want Your Soul to Answer?

Driven by the force of love, the fragments of the world
seek each other that the world may come into being.
- Pierre Teilhard de chardin, The Phenomenon of Man

My grandmother began to stroke my forehead very slowly, the signal that a story was on its way. Her stories always made a silken tent for the two of us to crawl into.

"Imagine, my darling, that back in the very beginning of everything, there was an immense crystal bowl floating in the dark velvet sky. Imagine it was glowing because it was made of light."

I held my breath until she continued.

"We don't know how the bowl got there or how long it stayed. But we do know that one day there was a cracking, crashing sound that was almost as big as the sky. The bowl shattered into a million, billion, trillion different seeds of light. They flew everywhere, piercing everything alive in the world. From that moment on, each living being has had, hidden in its heart, one of those tiny seeds of light."

She bent over and looked right into me with her Coca-Cola brown eyes. She whispered as if she were telling me great secrets.

"One such seed is inside of you, and one is inside of me. I call it the spot of grace. Every one of us, whether we know it or not, is supposed to find that special light. Then we are meant to grow it and shine it into the darkness of the world, helping others find their light. When everyone does, you see, the bowl will be made whole again."

"How come nobody talks about their spot of grace, Grandma?"

She leaned over and placed her lips against my ear. "Most people don't know about the bowl or that little seed of light because they don't have a grandma like you do. So when you grow up, your job will be to help them find it. Maybe you'll tell them this story. And when you do, your spot of grace will glow even brighter."

That story has carried me forward for more than six decades.

It has turned every wound and tragedy of my life into a doorway. Even now, as I reach toward you, dear reader, I still think of the spot of grace as a tiny seed of light, a luminosity that results from bringing the gift that only you can bring to the rest of the human community. This gift of the soul is what lights you up and gives your life meaning. It is what helps you know who you truly are and feel as if you belong, as if you don't want to hold anything back or in. When your days are rooted in this place, you stop caring about whether you have enough or are enough. Doubt gives way to wonder. You know that you do matter, and even more, you know that the world matters to you. It is this, remarkably, that allows you to make a difference.

I have had many incarnations in this one life - teacher, psychotherapist, researcher, corporate mythologist, thinking partner, author, organizational fairy godmother. Whatever I called it, what I have been doing is supporting individuals and communities of every shape and kind in recovering their lost wisdom and liberating their full capacity. I have been learning ways to turn inward with others in wonder so they can recognize and risk growing their spot of grace. I think of it as a transformative moment of meeting, creating a "yes tunnel," where together we follow the footprints of their soul.

Something different ignites that place for each of us. My son tells me he feels grace when he jumps off a snowy cornice on skis. My nephew lights up while watching the stock market gyrate. My friend Lorin describes the feeling of union he has when singing in a church choir. I experience moments of grace when I am connecting with other people in a particular way that feels like a great melting: when I sit with someone and listen deeply to the questions his or her life is asking or when I speak to a group and feel a ribbon of stories unfolding in my mind from some source larger than myself. There is a sense in the canyons of my bones that I'm doing what I was born to do. Plato said that the greatest calling of a human being is to be a midwife to the soul of another. The Buddhists call someone who aspires to help others in this way kalyanamitra. John O'Donohue, Irish poet and philosopher, calls it anam cara - friend of the soul.

I have lived enough to realize that I can't make grace happen. But I am discovering how to create the conditions that will make it possible for it to emerge. I can't say where it comes from, but I know that it feels like a cellular sense of well-being and being well; it feels as though everything - emotion, knowledge, intellect, and intuition - comes together in a single embrace and sighs. This book is a collection of such moments.

That Shining
John E. Welshons - Little Falls, New Jersey

One day in the 1980s, I was walking down Fifty-seventh Street in New York City, in the midst of a deep depression. I was having a difficult day, feeling troubled and anxious. Suddenly a young woman coming the other way glanced at me and smiled. Even then it wasn't common for someone to smile at a stranger in New York City, particularly a woman at a man. Her smile was just so pure, loving, and kind. It looked like a guru's smile. It magically lifted my spirits. I felt my heart open and soften. All of the problems I felt burdened with melted away.

Now, some twenty-five years later, I still remember the beauty of her smile. I still remember the silent kindness that came from someplace shining in her, touching something shining in me. I had no idea that such a bright place existed under all that darkness in me. Knowing that changed everything. I never again have been able to take my troubles so seriously, remembering that something as simple as a smile can ignite that shining. It still amazes me that such a simple moment can have an effect that lasts for decades.

Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart
a love of wonder; the sweet amazement at the stars
and starlike things and thoughts; the undaunted challenge of events,
the unfailing childlike appetite for what comes next,
and the joy in the game of life.
- Samuel Ullman

The CEO's Daughter
Dawna Markova

I never heard my father say, "I love you." He said many things to me in his lifetime, but never that. My mother collected newspaper clippings that chronicled his journey from inner city street fighter to ceo of a major Chicago corporation. He often said he regretted never having a son, an heir to whom he could pass on the legacy of knowledge gathered as he climbed to the top of the corporate ladder.

He lacked one thing, however, and it was his greatest secret and most profound shame. I remember going to his huge office every day after school. My feet left prints in the plush burgundy carpeting as I approached the immense mahogany desk. I pulled myself up onto the tan leather swivel chair. The only things on the shining desktop were a large reel-to-reel tape recorder and a very thick pile of papers held in place by a crystal weight carved with the company insignia.

Day after day, I pushed the button on the tape recorder and began to read the papers, one by one, into the microphone. Then, when I had finished, I'd slip my hand under the big black and green blotter and find the quarter my father had left me so I could buy a hot fudge sundae on the way home. No one ever found out about this ritual. It was our secret. No one ever found out he couldn't read a word.

When he returned home from work every day, he would slip on a pair of steel-rimmed glasses and sit in a big brown wing chair with a newspaper spread wide between his hands. He moved his head back and forth in the motion people often use while reading. I'd slip under the paper and crawl up on his knee to ask my inevitable question, "Daddy, do you love me?" He'd ruffle my hair, reach in his pocket, and whisper in my ear, "Here's a nickel; don't tell your mother."

When I was a teenager, I used to wear his huge white starched shirts to school over jeans, the sleeves rolled up, my hair in a ponytail. The bigness and stiffness never bothered me. I felt protected, surrounded in his certainty. But still I yearned to hear those words he'd never say. The nickel became a quarter, then a dollar. After college, I stopped asking. I went into therapy, pounded on a pillow with a tennis racket, and shouted, "I hate you, I hate you, Daddy! Why won't you ever tell me you love me?" When I was fully grown, with a child of my own, he was saying, "Here's five dollars; don't tell your mother."

During the last years of his life he had Alzheimer's disease. That lion of a corporate commander sat shrunken and unshaven in a black rocking chair in Hollywood, Florida, staring into worlds I couldn't see. I don't know if he could have responded if he'd wanted to, but for two years there was nothing. On what turned out to be my last visit to him, I knelt down on the floor and took his face between my hands. More than anything, I wanted him to know, to receive, all that I felt for him. I whispered fervently, "I love you, Daddy." His watery blue eyes reflected nothing. He was locked behind walls I could not climb.

I got to my feet, slipped my purse over my shoulder, and turned away, about to leave, when a thought crossed my mind. I reached into my wallet, pulled out a five-dollar bill, put it in his limp hand, and murmured in his ear, "Here's five dollars; don't tell Mom." Immediately he blinked, looked up at me, and smiled as he said in a gentle voice, "I love you too, sweetheart."

Those were the last words I ever heard him speak. He returned to the place behind the walls, and I went home. Still, in that one moment of grace, the best in each of us reached out and found the other.

There is in each of us an ongoing story. It contains our meaning and our destiny... This is our "soul story." ...And our deepest meaning is to stay with that story.
- Al Kreinheder

Worth Fighting For
Mary E. Guiberson, Seattle, Washington

On September 24, as I lay wanting to die in the house on Delridge, most of what I knew or believed about the world was dying with my addiction. At that moment I could never have envisioned the life I have today with a community that means so much to me. The only things holding me here were my heart, my will to live, and the prayers from my angels.

I was in the middle of a spiritual birth. I had to surrender my life to the care of others that day and the three days that followed. On the fourth day, my friend Carl woke me up and told me that I had a temperature of 106, and he thought I should go to the hospital immediately. I agreed, figuring I would get up and go by myself. That was how I had lived my life for the past five years, on the streets as an addict: by myself.

Much to my surprise, Carl called the ambulance, sat on the sidewalk with me waiting for them to come, got into the vehicle, and came with me to the hospital. He did not leave my side that Monday night until I was tucked into my room on the fourth floor of Harborview Medical Center. When Carl finally did go, he handed me a small gold heart as he walked out the door. He never returned, but the gift he gave me stays with me to this day. He made me feel that my life was worth fighting for, that I was someone who matters.

Secret Agent
Nancy Margulies, Montara, California

In August of 1998, boarding a Greyhound bus heading from Boulder to Denver, I noticed a young black woman standing in line. I'd been in Aspen, and she was the first black person I had seen in a week. As we climbed on, she noticed the silver bracelet I was wearing.

"I like your bracelet," she said.

"Thanks. I bought it in Mexico recently," I explained.

She told me that this thin silver chain was just the type of bracelet she'd been looking for. I offered to give her mine.

"Oh, no, I couldn't" was her immediate response.

"It's okay," I reassured her. "It wasn't expensive."

"Maybe I can buy it from you," she suggested.

"Look," I said, "what would be more fun - buying a bracelet from a total stranger or receiving a gift from a total stranger?"

She admitted that the gift would be much better. I took the bracelet off my wrist and put it on hers. It looked great. We found seats, one behind the other, and there was no more conversation. Leaving the bus, the young woman handed me a piece of notebook paper folded several times into a neat square. I thanked her and stuck it in my back pocket. A few hours later I remembered the paper and read it. In pencil she had written:

Dear Miss:

Today was an important day for me. You see, I am going out into the world without the protection of my family to see what it is like. Soon I will be going off to college, and today I am trying out being on my own away from home. Thank you so much for being the first person I was to meet.

God bless.
A. Stranger

I have her note framed on my wall. One of my favorite possessions. Perhaps I was born to welcome that young woman into the world of strangers. I may have been sent to Denver that day not to see my sister but to meet that one person on the bus. I'll never know. But from that meeting on, I was clear that the best way for me to live is to treat every event, each stranger, as a potential opportunity to act as an agent of the divine.

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me
the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit,
our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.
- Gilda Radner

Tucking In Tigers
Sarah Martinez-Helfman, Haverford, Pennsylvania

The adolescent boys from the residential treatment center were on their way either to jail or back into the community. I was the chief clinician and decided to take them camping. The afternoon we set out, I ventured into the woods with three of the boys. Before long, we had linked elbows, chanting, "Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my!" One of the boys leaned close and whispered, "If you tell anyone about this, I'll kill you," and though he was smiling, I didn't doubt that he meant it.

That night I played guitar and sang to the teens as darkness settled around us. Eventually I went from sleeping bag to sleeping bag, asking each boy if he wanted to be tucked in. The youngest, a guarded thirteen-year-old who made everything into a joke to protect himself, nodded at my offer. I pulled the opening of the bag to his chin and kissed his forehead. He started to cry, saying he'd never been tucked in before. That was all it took. Right then, I knew that I mattered.

I am only one, but I am still one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.
I will not refuse to do the something I can do.
- Helen Keller

© 2008, Dawna Markova, PhD, All Rights Reserved

Excerpted from the book, Spot of Grace © 2008 by Dawna Markova. Printed with permission from New World Library. 800-972-6657 ext. 50.