Grace Personified

[Photo by my friend, the brilliant photographer Wyatt McSpadden.]

There’s a wonderful young man who works at my rural post office. I’m pretty sure his name is Alex, but my mind has him filed under Jerry, because once, long ago, he wore a Tom & Jerry t-shirt to work and my brain made some association it can’t seem to shake.

Funnily enough, Jerry thinks my name is Grace. The reason he thinks this is that in 2023, he saw an essay I wrote for Texas Co-op Power Magazine. The piece is about my Tiny Chapel of Kindness and features a photo of me under a headline that includes the word Grace (with a capital G), which Jerry understandably mistook for my name. I have no intention of ever correcting him. Whenever I encounter him and he cheerfully calls out, Hey Grace! How ya doin?, I feel a shift inside me, like suddenly I have something very important to live up to. I am a better person on days I see Jerry. For on those days, I become Grace Personified. Well, at least I try.

I suppose one could argue that grace is one of those current buzzwords that has, due to overuse, lost its power. And it is true that you can’t swing a virtual cat (gracefully or otherwise) without hitting a meme or influencer trying to cash in on the concept (or at least the monosyllable): GRACE.

Still, I find this unintentional nickname bequeathed upon me quite moving, a reminder of how I want to live—with grace, in grace, extending grace to others, extending grace to myself. Considering that the post office is on Highway 71, where I am regularly cut off by insane drivers, there is the added bonus that maybe Jerry’s greeting will help me to not lose my shit as I exit the parking lot and sally forth to Austin on that treacherous road.

***

When I bought a 250-square foot church and moved it to the ranch in 2016, I just called it the Tiny Chapel. It became the Tiny Chapel of Kindness in late 2022. Back then, I wrote a very long, very detailed post about this transition. You can read that piece right here if you want, but honestly it is full of such ugliness that I recommend this synopsis instead:

In May of 2021, armed with a sudden windfall and surely driven by the kookiness of lockdown, I bought a Victorian house in a small Texas town. The house was magnificent, built in 1892, and rumored to have once been a brothel. Another fun fact—I bought it from Billy Idol’s guitarist. (Not that one. The one whose name no one can remember.) It had an all black bathroom and I liked to imagine that once upon a time Billy Idol had taken a dump in the black toilet. (“It’s a nice day for a black toilet, yeah…” 🎶 )

One day just before the 4th of July, I discovered someone had planted in my yard an American flag with a business card stapled to it. I was opposed to this for many reasons, chief among them that the trumpers had appropriated the flag and, even if they hadn’t, I will never be a jingoistic citizen of a country I happened to have randomly been born in, a land that was stolen from its original people.

I said this much in a Facebook post. I hadn’t announced my arrival to town, had hoped to keep a low profile, and so did not realize the town gossips had been stalking me online. My post stirred something in them and, in their minds, it was game on: I needed to be punished.

One day not long after my post, the mayor knocked on my door and escorted me to the police station where the chief informed me my life was in danger and that a city permitted parade would be happening soon, a parade to drive me out of town, and that I would be assigned police protection while it happened. Oh, and by the way, leading this event? A city council member and his wife who had rented out the town’s little train to lead the charge against me. The chief told me that the wife was being so vicious he had beseeched her to dial back her vitriol, to no avail.

The parade happened and it sucked. I stayed inside while a cop stood guard on my porch. I did my best to live chin up after that. I threw live jazz concerts, free and open to all. I revived the farmers market. I opened a knit shop, a yoga studio, and a small restaurant. I was boycotted, tormented, and could not step out of my house without the fear of being screamed at as they whizzed by in their golf carts. I received death threats. After seven months I sold the house and moved back to the ranch, which thankfully I still had.

It took me around a year before I could begin to function again. I rarely left the ranch. I was utterly freaked out. If I hadn’t already had PTSD, I would have developed it. I was in tremendous pain which, for me, frequently showed up as rage. I did a whole art series about what the people in that town had done to me. I cried. I was a wreck. I knew from all my Buddhist studies and self-help work and therapy that carrying around anger is like committing protracted suicide. But I couldn’t simply snap my fingers and stop being angry.

It did, however, eventually occur to me that I could use the Tiny Chapel as a source of healing. I invited people to submit letters describing acts of kindness they had experienced, letters I would hang on the chapel walls. This is when I dubbed the building the Tiny Chapel of Kindness. As the letters arrived, with each one my heart opened a little more, and I began to heal. Over time, the chapel received some press—in addition to the essay I wrote, it was also featured on KUT’s Arts Eclectic with Michael Lee and on The Texas Country Reporter, a TV show sponsored by Texas Monthly.

Though all that coverage happened some time ago, occasionally someone will stumble upon it and send a letter for me to post on the wall. That’s exactly what happened last week as I was striving so hard to get my sad and grieving mind to a place of steadier standing. It read:

I have been fortunate to have several moments of Kindness throughout life. One memory is when my husband was in the hospital and I was told that there was nothing else that could be done and that he would be coming home on hospice care. As I was driving home later that afternoon I began to cry uncontrollably and had to pull over on a residential street. As I sat there sobbing with my head on the steering wheel I heard a motorcycle pull up next to my truck. This burly guy got off his bike and walked over to my truck. He asked if I was ok. I told him that I was going to be bringing my husband home to die. He just stood next to my truck and talked to me for about 20 minutes until I had calmed down enough to be able to drive. He told me that he would pray for me and my husband. He watched me for a few moments as I pulled away. He was an angel that day. I could easily have gotten into a wreck if I had tried to drive any further in the state that I was in. This happened more than 20 years ago, and I still think of that burly angel every time I drive that way.

Terri C.

As I always do when I receive such notes, I wept. I wept for the story it contained. I wept for the glorious timing of its arrival, when I really needed a boost. In turn, I got out my typewriter and tapped out a reply, explaining what a gift the letter was, how comforting I found it during my own tough times, and thanking Terri for it. I took it to the post office where I am known as Grace and dropped it in the mail. A few days later I received an email from Terri, consoling me regarding my current grief and offering her encouragement and soft advice that I be gentle with myself.

You know—have grace with myself. Or, better yet, Be Grace. Just like Jerry at the post office thinks I am.

I know this is twice in three weeks I’ve written about kindness. No excuses. Kindness is the one thing that consistently gives me hope in these terribly trying times. Maybe I should only write about kindness from here on out. Do me a favor—tell me a story about some kindness you’ve experienced. I’ll print up all the stories you leave in the comments and put them up in the Tiny Chapel of Kindness.

Thanks for reading y’all. I hope you’re holding up okay and experiencing kindness on the regular.

JOY & BEAUTY DEPARTMENT

My friend Joy put out an incredible record, Legendary—her tribute to the Old Austin band the Reivers. This is Joy’s interpretation of their 1985 record Translate Slowly and there’s a super cool story behind the recording. You can read that here. Listen to the record HERE.

My friend Amber wrote a gorgeous essay, Dam Cross, about her time at a Lutheran summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, and her beautiful connection with her friend Kim, who died way too young. You can read that here.

THE LAWN MOWER REPORT

NOTES:

Thanks for reading. If you can swing a paid subscription, please consider it. $30 per year gets you honorary status as a Tiny T Ranch Hand. You can also help by sharing this with others you think will dig it.

I have another substack for writers: WriteWithSpike.substack.com —no paywall there. It’s a great writing community and I offer lots of prompts and interesting articles about writing.

Upcoming FREE and donation based workshops happening in July:

July 14 10 am til noon San Marcos Public Library FREE just show up.

July 14 1:30-3:30 Hyde Park Theatre. Donation based ($20 suggested) just show up.

July 15 5:30-7:30 Hampton Branch Library in Austin. FREE. Please register here.

July 21 10 am til noon San Marcos Public Library FREE just show up.

July 21 1:30-3:30 Cherrywood Community Center. ($20 suggested) just show up.

August 2 10 am - 1 pm Ranch Writing Day. ($20 suggested) Please register here.

PUBLIC READING

On Wednesday August 6 at 7 pm, I am hosting a reading at Hyde Park Theatre featuring several members of my various workshops. Hoping to turn this into an ongoing series. To avoid ridiculous fees charged by various ticket platforms, I am selling tickets directly. Please email me: spikegillespie@gmail.com to get your tickets. $10 each. It’s a small room so it will sell out. Don’t wait!