Acceptance is a form of the spiritual practice of letting go, up to and including the self that lets go or doesn't, or even decides to let go or not.

I am saying, somewhat paradoxically, that when we truly accept something or someone, we also let them go. We release them.

When we accept something, we are declaring that it does not have to change or be modified or improved or somehow be different than it is. When we accept something as it is in the moment, we declare our trust in God. There are no mistakes.

It is very beautiful to accept someone in this way.

It is also very beautiful to learn that we cannot yet accept others in this way, and resolve to become able.

I think often of Therese of Lisieux. She was only fifteen years old when she entered the convent at Lisieux, and not quite twenty-five when she she died there.

Therese did not see herself as a spiritual genius; she did not believe she had any special talents or gifts. Therefore, she sought a "little way" of loving Jesus. She made ordinary difficulties a gift to Jesus. A nun who was ornery, the last of the soup, cold tea. When she coughed up blood, knowing full well

That's really what she was letting go of - that special self, that ego. The little way was designed to undo ego as quickly and totally as possible.

So she'd make a point of sitting with nuns who annoyed or mistreated her. She's take the last of the soup, eat bread off the floor. The first time she coughed up blood - knowing full well the painful death it meant was coming - she rejoiced.

Therese sought suffering in order to undo the self which needed suffering in the first place. She took the idea and practice of itinerancy to the edge and then went over. Sometimes that's how it happens.

I am not saying that you should do what Therese did. But I am saying, acceptance means being in relationship with suffering, your and everyone else's. The way that we practice acceptance speaks to our concepts of God, Love and healing. All the metaphysics so fundamental to ACIM - what am I, what is the world, what is relationship - are answered in our practice of acceptance.

The other thing about acceptance is that it always relates us back to the present moment, what A Course in Miracles calls the holy instant. Acceptance is a present action. When we let go of our expectations for others, we are also letting go of our expectations of ourself, and something softens. Something miraculous comes forth. You are free of fear and capable of loving in the unconditional way that God loves. And all that may pass, but you'll never forget it.

Say what you want about the holy instant - we're pure awareness, the open space in which all this happens, we're Buddha under the Bo Tree and Christ on the cross, we've awakened from the sleep of separation, it doesn't matter. The word is not the state to which it points. The state itself is given. It doesn't have a proper name. It's both bigger than that, and so simple and ordinary, naming it would be ridiculous.

So we can make that our practice - we can work at accepting other people, situations and so forth just as they are. But not in a resigned way! In a happy way, a loving way, a welcoming way. Okay - this is how it is right now! I accept that. As we become more skillful in this practice, we find ourselves becoming lighter. There's less to hold onto it and carry, and in the absence of burdens IS light.

We are, moment by moment, recovering the grace we forgot was ours to share.