Notes by Doug Muder (1997)

"I have come to believe and have tried to demonstrate that people's capacity to love, and hence their will to grow, is nurtured not only by the love of their parents during childhood but also throughout their lives by grace, or God's love. … It is because of grace that it is possible for people to transcend the traumas of loveless parenting and become themselves loving individuals who have risen far above their parents on the scale of human evolution. Why, then, do only some people spiritually grow and evolve beyond the circumstances of their parentage? I believe that grace is available to everyone. … The only answer I can give, therefore, is that most of us choose not to heed the call of grace and to reject its assistance." [page 300]

"With the peace of grace come agonizing responsibilities, duties, obligations. … It is no wonder that patients in psychotherapy have little taste for the power that accompanies genuine mental health. … It may sound strange to laymen, but psychotherapists are familiar with the fact that people are routinely terrified by mental health. A major part of the task of psychotherapy is not only to bring patients to the experience of mental health but also, through a mixture of consolation, reassurance and sternness, to prevent them from running away from that experience once they have arrived at it." [pages 302-303]

"The question we are left with, then, is not why people fail to accept psychotherapy, or fail to benefit from it even in the best hands, or why humans routinely resist grace; the force of entropy makes it only natural that they should do so. Rather, the question is the opposite: How is it that a few do heed the call that is so difficult? What distinguishes the few from the many? I am unable to answer this question. … Much as we have been able to say about the phenomenon of grace, in the end we are left having to acknowledge its mysterious nature." [pages 305-306]

"The paradox that we both choose grace and are chosen by grace is the essence of the phenomenon of serendipity. … A major purpose of this section on grace has been to assist those on the journey of spiritual growth to learn the capacity of serendipity. And let us redefine serendipity not as a gift itself but as a learned capacity to recognize and utilize the gifts of grace which are given to us from beyond the realm of our conscious will. With this capacity, we will find that our journey of spiritual growth is guided by the invisible hand and unimaginable wisdom of God with infinitely greater accuracy than that of which our unaided conscious will is capable." [pages 307-309]

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