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Gracing
What if God lived with you? Right now. Every day. On this side of eternity. What if grace was not a thing that eventually made you fit for heaven, but a way to experience heaven now? What if you lived grace as a verb instead of a noun? Hannah Packard Crowther explores this abundant, nourishing, and down-to-earth spiritual life. Coined gracing, this way of being blurs the boundaries between holiness and the mundane, between a future paradise and a present one. She pivots from lyrical reflections on fireflies to humorous pop-culture anecdotes, from wrestling with chronic disease to delighting in the sonic underwater calls of pantropical spotted dolphins. She explores algebraic relationships and family relationships, Jewish covenant and ecological interconnectedness, her Latter-day Saint faith alongside her universal hope. Framed as a collection of seashells, Gracing gathers truths and moments that point to a deep, universal ocean—an everyday, intimate partnership with God. Ultimately, readers are invited into this creative and vibrant life.
- GenresReligionLdsChristianity
229 pages, Paperback
Published September 6, 2024
17 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
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September 12, 2024Translating ideas from one heart to another is much like translating words between languages. The meanings don't transfer perfectly, and some nuances are inevitably lost. However, this imperfect transfer allows the recipient to fill in the gaps with their own understanding, giving the ideas new life. As ideas flow from person to person, they continually evolve.
As the author of Gracing, I hope that while some of my intended meanings may be lost in translation, new forms will emerge. Grace, as a day-to-day collaborative partnership with God, will manifest uniquely for each reader. This is exactly as it should be.
Ultimately, my outsized hope is that each reader's personal translation will resonate as deeply for them as their own mother tongue. Gracing could have no better home. Thank you for engaging with my work.
As the author of Gracing, I hope that while some of my intended meanings may be lost in translation, new forms will emerge. Grace, as a day-to-day collaborative partnership with God, will manifest uniquely for each reader. This is exactly as it should be.
Ultimately, my outsized hope is that each reader's personal translation will resonate as deeply for them as their own mother tongue. Gracing could have no better home. Thank you for engaging with my work.
October 13, 2024
The writing in this book transports you to some kind of magical alternate universe filled with God (but not dogma), and beauty (and also pain), without feeling unrealistic or out of touch.
I love the idea of gracing, engaging in life with the divine. I love the stories pulled from Crowther's life and nature and science. I love thinking hard about the ideas presented. I loved this book, and will be thinking about it for a long long time.
Edited to add:
I've just read another book (Original Grace by Adam Miller) which feels like a perfect companion piece to this one. In 9th grade, I learned math and how to measure a triangle using various formulas and angles and tools. Math class proved these theories and formulas and how to use them. But at the end of the year we attended 9th grade Lagoon day, and used what we had learned to measure the height of a roller coaster and speed necessary to make it up the next hill, and what principles were guaranteeing our safety. Original Grace is math class where we learn how and prove that grace is the whole plan. Gracing is Lagoon, where we see what it looks like and means in real life.
I love the idea of gracing, engaging in life with the divine. I love the stories pulled from Crowther's life and nature and science. I love thinking hard about the ideas presented. I loved this book, and will be thinking about it for a long long time.
Edited to add:
I've just read another book (Original Grace by Adam Miller) which feels like a perfect companion piece to this one. In 9th grade, I learned math and how to measure a triangle using various formulas and angles and tools. Math class proved these theories and formulas and how to use them. But at the end of the year we attended 9th grade Lagoon day, and used what we had learned to measure the height of a roller coaster and speed necessary to make it up the next hill, and what principles were guaranteeing our safety. Original Grace is math class where we learn how and prove that grace is the whole plan. Gracing is Lagoon, where we see what it looks like and means in real life.
December 24, 2024
This is a contemplative book. It is a book of tender mercies and small moments of peace. I loved reading it and feeling the same tender mercies and small moments in my life. I would be a better person if I could always live the way this book describes life.
February 6, 2025
I’m not sure I can adequately describe this book. It was beautiful, expanding, enlightening, hopeful, powerful. I feel altered by it. In the best way possible. It brought me closer to God in a deeply personal and wonderful way. Thank you Hannah for sharing your life, your musings, your journey, your wisdom, your beautiful mind and perspective. I purchased copies for family members and friends. I rarely keep books because I’m in a life stage of reduction, but I will keep this one close.
January 31, 2025
4.5 stars. “What if grace was not a thing that eventually made you fit for heaven, but a way to experience heaven now?” Gracing is a beautiful and poetic book about how we can actively participate in grace in our everyday lives. This book helped open my eyes to more tender mercies and what partnering with God can look like. It is thoughtful, hopeful, and imaginative. I also appreciated the scientific lens that she utilized in describing her spiritual thoughts (she has a science education). The beginning started off strong and I was marking my book like crazy. The second half was not as dense with insight (or maybe I just understood the general concept she was painting by then). Overall, I enjoyed the time to slowly read and savor this meditation on gracing.
“Grace as a noun transforms in gracing—a verb.
The phenomenon is participatory,
Collaborative.
Something like flow.
A partnership of anchored flight,
Shells gathered from a generous shore.
It’s living in heaven while standing on earth
--Like being joined at the hip with God.”
Chapters: Collecting, Specializing, Transforming, Partnering, Creating, Teaching, Attending, Redeeming, Wrestling, Playing, Resting, Storytelling, Returning, Perceiving, Oneing
-“Each person can embrace grace as it manifests in their own spheres. All of us are in practice. In learning to embrace grace, ordinary people, moments, and material reveal themselves in their extraordinariness. And we too are revealed through this gracing. Grace appears, among other forms, as healing amidst suffering, sure-footedness on a murky path, joy amid mundane tasks, and strength despite perpetually poor habits that are seemingly unbreakable. But grace also shows up in almost scandalously ordinary moments—a conversation, a glance, a tune, a hurried day, a breath.” p. 4-5
-“In trying got be there, I seek words to express my own moments of shining transfiguration. I am invited to both find and illuminate God…Wrangling words from vague thoughts is hard work, but in the meantime God shines here—transforms me here. I am powerfully drawn to participate.” p. 15
-“I had been my whole life a bell and never knew it until at the moment I was lifted and struck.” Annie Dillard p. 15
-“All who discover Zion are welcome there. All who create Zion come home. It’s where the pure in heart see God and where the fulness of reality opens to our panoramic view.” p. 28
-“When lived in a certain way, works are a collaborative partnership between humanity and divinity that places our works and God’s grace at the same point on the timeline.” p 31 (“gather together in one all things in Christ” Eph. 1:10)
-“God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. The Latter-day Saints cannot do it all. It is too vast, too arduous, for any one people.” -Orson Whitney p. 76
-“Repentance is the journey of turning to God again and again. We forget to join with God, and then we remember. We think we’re are right, and then we realize we are wrong…We live with ego-driven, narrow vision, and then…we zoom out and see that God was present all along. Our experience and story changes. God offers alternate views, relationships, healings, and ways of being and seeing—over and over.” p. 147
-“Being a Jew meant hearing the beat of a divine drummer. The law, so often viewed with derision by Christians, brought a divine calibration to our people. It brought a sense of sacred order syncing our calendar and daily life with God’s heartbeat.” p. 161 Jason Olsen on holding both his Jewish and LDS faith
-“Engaging in this embodied earthly experience with my particular group of people and in my particular corner of the world, the vastness of God is illuminated.” p. 187
“Grace as a noun transforms in gracing—a verb.
The phenomenon is participatory,
Collaborative.
Something like flow.
A partnership of anchored flight,
Shells gathered from a generous shore.
It’s living in heaven while standing on earth
--Like being joined at the hip with God.”
Chapters: Collecting, Specializing, Transforming, Partnering, Creating, Teaching, Attending, Redeeming, Wrestling, Playing, Resting, Storytelling, Returning, Perceiving, Oneing
-“Each person can embrace grace as it manifests in their own spheres. All of us are in practice. In learning to embrace grace, ordinary people, moments, and material reveal themselves in their extraordinariness. And we too are revealed through this gracing. Grace appears, among other forms, as healing amidst suffering, sure-footedness on a murky path, joy amid mundane tasks, and strength despite perpetually poor habits that are seemingly unbreakable. But grace also shows up in almost scandalously ordinary moments—a conversation, a glance, a tune, a hurried day, a breath.” p. 4-5
-“In trying got be there, I seek words to express my own moments of shining transfiguration. I am invited to both find and illuminate God…Wrangling words from vague thoughts is hard work, but in the meantime God shines here—transforms me here. I am powerfully drawn to participate.” p. 15
-“I had been my whole life a bell and never knew it until at the moment I was lifted and struck.” Annie Dillard p. 15
-“All who discover Zion are welcome there. All who create Zion come home. It’s where the pure in heart see God and where the fulness of reality opens to our panoramic view.” p. 28
-“When lived in a certain way, works are a collaborative partnership between humanity and divinity that places our works and God’s grace at the same point on the timeline.” p 31 (“gather together in one all things in Christ” Eph. 1:10)
-“God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. The Latter-day Saints cannot do it all. It is too vast, too arduous, for any one people.” -Orson Whitney p. 76
-“Repentance is the journey of turning to God again and again. We forget to join with God, and then we remember. We think we’re are right, and then we realize we are wrong…We live with ego-driven, narrow vision, and then…we zoom out and see that God was present all along. Our experience and story changes. God offers alternate views, relationships, healings, and ways of being and seeing—over and over.” p. 147
-“Being a Jew meant hearing the beat of a divine drummer. The law, so often viewed with derision by Christians, brought a divine calibration to our people. It brought a sense of sacred order syncing our calendar and daily life with God’s heartbeat.” p. 161 Jason Olsen on holding both his Jewish and LDS faith
-“Engaging in this embodied earthly experience with my particular group of people and in my particular corner of the world, the vastness of God is illuminated.” p. 187
September 23, 2025
"Gracing" is an insightful and artful meditation on the practicalities of living in a sea of grace to which we are often ignorant. Woven from threads of Crowther's experiences and the thoughts of poets, philosophers, priests, and scholars, "Gracing" is not intended as a work of scholarship. It is lyrical, dwelling on different aspects of experiencing God's grace: playing, transforming, collecting, and so forth. Numerous subtle yet colorful observations frame Crowther's work, many of them falling outside the usual Mormon doctrinal boundaries. This is welcome, and Crowther does it skillfully and warmly. Rigid proponents of LDS orthodoxy probably wouldn't pick up this book in the first place, but if they did I don't think it would resonate. But Christians/LDS with open minds and hearts will find a lot to love here.
January 1, 2025
Liturgy of the Ordinary (Tish Harrison Warren) meets Original Grace and A New Resurrection (Adam Miller).
Favorite quotes: “…there are far more New Testament references to the kingdom of God as a feast, a wedding, or a party than there are to a courtroom or judgement. How did we miss this?” (P. 110-111). “God’s creations may be just as much a result of His play as they are His work” (p. 118).
Don’t miss the poems at the end—they are a real treat!
Favorite quotes: “…there are far more New Testament references to the kingdom of God as a feast, a wedding, or a party than there are to a courtroom or judgement. How did we miss this?” (P. 110-111). “God’s creations may be just as much a result of His play as they are His work” (p. 118).
Don’t miss the poems at the end—they are a real treat!
March 31, 2025
As I finished this book, I felt like I needed to start reading it again to really understand its concepts. I'll admit to having a little difficulty with using "grace" as a verb.
Hannah is a good friend of my daughter, and I hope to meet her one day. The way she lives her life is truly inspirational.
Hannah is a good friend of my daughter, and I hope to meet her one day. The way she lives her life is truly inspirational.
March 8, 2025
This is a gentle, contemplative read that I really enjoyed. I liked that each chapter is a standalone essay, and I could read one chapter and then meditate on it before moving on the next. Lovely book with lovely message.
February 12, 2025
Great insights on both receiving grace and giving grace. I love how Hannah uses personal experiences to illustrate her points. She is humble and wise.
September 1, 2025
This book was breathtakingly beautiful. I marked so many passages that made me feel closer to God, closer to Christ, and made me want to seek the holy in my life more fully.
December 3, 2025
Absolutely beautiful prose delving into how grace flows through our messy, simple, extraordinary human lives.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews