Gates and Grace...

Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan...entrance to trails through
thousands of gates leading into the wooded forest of the sacred Mount Inari
Every one of the thousands of huge vermillion torii (gates) found at the Fushimi Inari Taisha (Shrine) was a gift honoring Inari, the Shinto god of rice. Â Each of these massive structures represents donations valued from $40,000 to $1,000,000 from individuals and companies celebrating prosperity and abundance. Â As you can see, the torii are placed every few feet, and cover over a mile of trails leading up the mountain.
Walking in the sacred space, through gate after gate up the moss-covered stone and dirt path, I was overwhelmed with a sense of timelessness. Â Curiously, as a child growing up on a lake in Michigan, in a rural area made up of mostly corn fields and dirt roads, I lived next door to a Japanese Tea House. Â My parents told me the lake home we lived in was sold by folks who used it as a vacation home, and the Tea House was their "party house". Â It had a traditional Japanese open floor plan and decor, and was surrounded by a huge Japanese garden, with moss-covered stone pagoda statues and flowering plants so different than anything else I knew. Â That garden was where I played, alone in my own world, with the fuchsia lantern flowers, sitting in the white-gray pea gravel, for hours.
And at the Fushimi Inari Shrine, I met thousands of torii the exact same color as the one that bordered the entrance to my childhood garden, with the same statues along the way, little stone pagodas whose rough surface felt the same as the ones I played with decades ago.
How I came to explore this foreign mystical sacred mountain now, but seeing and feeling my childhood sanctuary, was so beyond my comprehension I still can't make sense of it.
That's what I think grace is. Â Connection we feel, that makes no sense. Â A deeply known truth, and pure beauty, that holds only safety and complete love. Â And gratitude for something we can't name, or even really describe, without distorting the picture completely. Â So we hold it like we hold all things we know individually, alone, but always as a part of the whole -- we hold it in our heart. Â