Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness.  It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life.  It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us.  It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades . . .  Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into your darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know" . . . Simply accept that you are accepted! If that happens, we experience grace.  After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before.  But everything is transformed . . . and nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.