Lucy Grace never intended to embark upon a formal spiritual path. Yet again and again, she felt called deeper into it.
Raised by a young, single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in New Zealand, Lucy experienced significant trauma throughout childhood. Her neighborhood was riddled with gang violence and burglaries. Her mother worked at a secondhand shop, and meager earnings meant they sometimes went without food, heat, furniture, or schoolbooks - much less trips or vacations. They did not have the means for a car until Lucy turned fourteen.
Despite the violence and trauma Lucy experienced and witnessed, she often felt joyful as a child. She also had a keen sense that though she didn't fit, she was in the wrong place. As an only child without much exposure to the world beyond her immediate surroundings, Lucy discovered the gift of spaciousness within herself. She describes her relative isolation as a kind of "welfare-child ashram". In her poem, "Kairos Time," she wrote, "I lived my whole life / on a whim and a dime / - on God's time / found solace and / wonderment / in the light that lives / inside the darkest quiet."
Since childhood, Lucy has lived many lives, including graduating from college and working as a television journalist for New Zealand's largest national news channel, Channel One News. For 15 years, she worked as a humanitarian aid worker based in Europe for UNICEF, Save the Children, Fairtrade, and Oxfam. She has worked in orphanages and disaster zones around the world, helping to bring relief to people who are suffering.
Returning to New Zealand in her early thirties, Lucy navigated a sudden debilitating illness with no recognizable cause. When she was thirty-six, she became a mother and experienced a sense of total separation in which she felt severed from the inner guidance that had accompanied her since she was a child. Many of the things she loved - including her career, marriage, and home - also came to an end during this time.
But with a gentle cheerfulness, Lucy sees that her whole life has been about attuning to nature's messages - and learning to move with them. "There are things that want to happen and we can feel that pull," she has said. "And the plans of life are always so much more amazing and incredible than little Lucy's brain can think up."
Today, Lucy is a spiritual guide who humbly observes that we are, each of us, teachers. She is also a mystic, holistic therapist, and the author of This Untameable Light, a book of poems that, in Adyashanti’s words, “shine with the light of deeply embodied spirit. A dance of light upon the land.” She is based in New Zealand and offers occasional retreats in other parts of the world, helping "unlock and integrate" the unique truths and wisdom in each of us.
Join us on April 27 for a call with this mystic poet and deeply relatable spiritual guide, who regards her mother and daughter as her greatest gurus.
My Mothers’ love
...I love you—in all your ways and always will!
She taught me God will too, you will too, life will too, no matter what I am, aren't, do or don't do.
And what else is there?
Somewhere in my marrow is the sense that all of life is benevolent
and it loves me like she did, without exception, without expectation-conditionless
She gave me unearned-love's freedom, no life-lines to toe, no scripts to follow.
So who needs dollars and cents?
That's her gift, that's
inheritance...
Thank you
...We are all haunted, grace-filled beings
-I was just trying to live with the hauntings, wasn't seeking, anything.
But you brought me to my knees, you broke me bodily (the heart was just the half of it.)
You opened me,
white flagged the wars in me.
My three-foot guru, in gumboot feet...
The call will be moderated by our volunteers Mark Peters, and Mili Nair, a young teenager "exploring life through the wonders of sentences and words, periods and exclamation marks"!
