On Receiving Grace

It isn’t something you achieve or earn. It arrives.

The banner I use for Older Artists carries three words beneath the title: grace, gratitude, and celebration. I chose them years ago for the Older Artists Facebook group I started, and they still mean enough to me that I carried them into this project. They still speak to me. So does the order.

I put grace first.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about why.

Turning 78 — just two years from 80 — changes things. I mentioned to my younger brother, who turned 77 this year, that he was now in his late 70s. He balked. Didn’t like the sound of that one bit.

I understood completely.

It’s remarkable how small increments carry so much more weight at this end of the calendar.

Not surprisingly, he’s also the one who called me after learning about Clint Eastwood’s personal mantra — the one that inspired Toby Keith’s song — to extract a solemn brotherly promise from me:

Don’t let the old man in.

We’re trying.

The questions that come with aging are real and present. How long will my health hold? How long can I keep producing at the level I’m enjoying? How long will my money last, my friends, my family?

These aren’t abstract worries I can file away for another day. They stick with me.

And yet despite all of that, I feel something I can only call grace.

Becoming and Receiving

I’ve come to believe there’s a difference between becoming and receiving.

I first understood becoming in my 40s while working my way through Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It took me three passes before it finally landed, but when it did, I could feel myself changing in ways I couldn’t reverse. I was reaching toward something — a better version of myself — and slowly becoming it.

That’s becoming.

Receiving is different.

It isn’t something you achieve or earn. It arrives.

Presently, I feel like I’m receiving grace. Not in a religious sense — these days, I lean more toward being agnostic — and Catholic when flying.

What I mean is that I feel more settled, more content, and somehow more creative than I’ve ever been.

I think I’m doing my best work right now.

Part of that comes from freedom. I no longer feel tethered to whether something will grow my audience or make me more money. I do things because I feel them deeply enough to do them. That kind of freedom took me a long time to find.

I think of human connection as strands. Some are wide pipelines. Some are as thin as a thread. Grace feels like that, too. It arrives differently depending on the day, the person, the moment — but it keeps arriving. More of it than before.

Mary, my wife, is part of this. As we’ve grown older together, she’s become more important to me than ever — my partner in the fullest sense, the most important person in my life. She gives me grace, and I try to do the same for her.

And this — Older Artists, you, this ongoing conversation we’re having — is part of it too.

I put something out from within me, and what comes back is warmth. But more than warmth, really. Your presence here, your support, and the spoken and unspoken sentiment you carry toward this project have become one of the deepest sources of grace in my life.

Even if you’ve never said it outright, I know you’re here with me.

And I believe you’re receiving your share of grace too.

The grace of being an older artist. Of having made it this far with your creativity intact and your eyes still open.

That’s why I do this.

I’ll see you soon.

— Barney