Quotes by Cathleen Falsani

Grace has a way of sneaking up on you like that. When you least deserve it.

Sometimes grace is having the strength to persevere through the storm.Sometimes its having the guts to rebuild, to take a chance, to follow your nose and your heart rather than your head.Sometimes grace is finding out that your preconceived notions are dead wrong. Sometimes its being surprised by joy. Sometimes grace is something you can feel even if you cant see it. And sometimes its a bowl of watermelon gazpacho when you were expecting Taco Bell.

Everyone experiences grace, even if they dont realize it. Its kind of like Mobys music. You could ask your average sixty-something-year-old retired banker in Connecticut if hes ever heard of Moby and/or his music and the response youd receive more than likely would be a resounding, “No—whats a Moby?” But if you say, “Remember that American Express commercial where Tiger Woods is putting around New York City? Remember the song playing? That was Moby.” “Oh, then, OK. I guess I have heard Moby,” our theoretical retired banker in New Canaan might say. “So … what exactly is a Moby?” Thats like grace. Not that grace is a pretentious vegan techno-rocker, but you get the idea. Grace is everywhere, all around us, all of the time. We only need the ears to hear it and the eyes to see it.

When Annunziata said she loved me or any of her thousands of other friends and beloveds, she was really saying, at least in my mind, “God loves you.” To quote the singer/songwriter James Taylor, she showered the people she loved with love, always showing the way that she felt without holding back. Even as her body could barely contain her soul any longer, shed open wide the gates of herself with a smile, that giggle, her twinkling eyes, and shed let the supernatural love flow through her. Walking out of the chapel after her funeral, a woman Id never seen before stopped me and said, “Youre Cathleen, arent you?” “Yes,” I croaked, tears rolling off my nose as I fingered the prayer card with Annunziatas picture on it. Slipping an arm around my shoulders, the woman explained that she was one of Annunziatas former students and said, “She loved you so much.” I know.

I would say that grace is startling,” Jean told me as he began retelling the story of how he wound up as pastor of Lagniappe Presbyterian Church, a growing congregation that meets in a glorified metal hangar in Bay St. Louis. “Its just startling. It isnt supposed to work. This wasnt supposed to work.

While its true that you may lose your religion during the course of a lifetime, you never lose your salvation. Once you let Jesus in your kitchen, he just keeps on making peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and he never leaves.

Outside, it feels like there is less standing between the Creator and us. There is a lingering visceral connection we can hear and see and smell, reminders of the bond between Creator and creation, like the mountain sage crushed up in the pocket of the sweatshirt I was wearing on a short, muddy hike the other day. “In