The Secret of the Twin Sisters

This one’s a case that’s been dogging me for years. Not your run-of-the-mill file, this one. No missing person. No stolen briefcase. I was on a hunt — and it took me places I never dreamed.

It started in a pew. Ended in a dojo.

She walked in like trouble always does: quiet, but packing questions. But she wasn’t a woman — not exactly. She was a word. Slippery as a conman’s smile, soft as an old hymn.

I’d chased her before. Thought I had her pinned once or twice. But she kept shape-shifting — always just out of reach.

And today… she told me about her sister. The one with a Chinese passport.

Clue #1 – Enter the Flow

She first whispered to me by the water — not loud, just a hush in the reeds, like something ancient passing through. Flow, she called herself. Said she was from the East. Said she wasn’t here to fight.

I’d seen her type before — quiet, steady, always moving. Like the river she rode in on. Flow doesn’t shout or shove; she just goes, and if you don’t resist, she’ll take you somewhere worth seeing.

I watched how she slipped past life’s jagged edges without a scratch. She wasn’t avoiding the mess — she was moving with it. That’s the secret: flow doesn’t resist the current. It is the current.

But don’t confuse her softness for weakness. Flow’s got muscle — discipline in a silk dress. To keep up, you don’t train your biceps. You train your breath. Your stillness. Your presence.

Ever seen a baller drain a shot from half-court? That’s flow. A writer lost in the click-clack rhythm of the muse? Flow. You ever scrub a sink and feel like you’re polishing the universe? That’s flow too.

Me, I found her during Qi Gong — in the pause after breath, the space between thoughts. She taught me what most men spend their lives unlearning:

Clue #2 – The Case File on Grace

I met Grace when I was knee-high to my old man. She wore Sunday shoes and a King James accent, quoting Ephesians like gospel on tap. “Unmerited favour,” they called her. Wrapped in tidy acronyms and dressed up for the brochure.

But Grace had secrets. She kept showing up even after I’d “received” her. Still stumbling. Still sinning. If she’d saved me, why did I still feel like I was on trial?

That led me to Calvinism — where Grace was irresistible, but only for the chosen. If you believed, it was because God had slipped the faith in your pocket when you weren’t looking. And if you didn’t? Well... tough luck. Most were damned. End of story.

After my awakening, the fog cleared. Grace wasn’t a transaction. She wasn’t a prize for piety. She wasn’t something to attain.
She was something to join.

The early Jesus movement knew that. Before the cathedrals and scandals, before salvation became a product. Grace walked barefoot through Galilee, hand in hand with the not-quite-perfect. She didn’t ask for résumés. She asked if you were tired of pretending.

Paul saw her first — a street-level jailbreak, not a temple ritual. But then came Augustine, who collared her with guilt. The Church turned her into a substance, dispensed through sacraments, guarded by gatekeepers in robes.

Luther tried to rescue her — “Grace alone!” he cried — but even then, she came with doctrinal baggage. Calvin made her exclusive. Tent revivalists made her theatrical. She cried during altar calls and somehow cost you, even when she was “free.”

Grace isn’t old-fashioned. She’s timeless. But she's been so commodified, people hardly recognise her.
She’s not a membership.
She’s not a marketing plan.
She’s not an emergency escape hatch.

She’s a river.
She flows.
She doesn’t need your permission.

But in Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christianity?
Grace is bottled.

Clue #3: The Case Gets Personal

I’m not just a gumshoe scribbling notes on Grace from a safe distance. I’ve been chasing her footprints through every story I write. She’s in the ink. Between the lines. You’ll find her in Nick Grayson: The Truth in the Lies — the first file in a long, twisted case. Dossier’s here.

The sequel, Pure Evil, drops this fall — Thanksgiving, if Grace herself lends a hand with the edits.

Nick Grayson — back when he was still “Little Nicky” — learned early that Grace came in chalices and Latin. That illusion shattered fast, thanks to a priest who made sure kids like him knew Grace didn’t do house calls. These days, Nick doesn’t know where she is — but he believes in justice. He fights to straighten the bent.

He hasn’t figured it out yet…

But that is grace.
In combat boots. With a five o’clock shadow.

Father Rousseau? Old-school. Latin Mass, candle smoke. Found Grace in whispers and wine — but in Pure Evil, he peels back the marble and finds rot. His Church is crumbling. So he fights. Rosary in one hand. Sword in the other. That kind of Grace leaves bruises.

Lisa? Tough as coffin nails. Faith stitched with Voodoo thread and street grit. Grace is in her sass, her loyalty, her refusal to quit on Nick. No halo — just hoop earrings and a stare that could slice marble.

Malik? Got cosy with spirits. Took their graces for granted. Now they’re collecting. He’s haunted — by ghosts and guilt. He’s searching for Grace in all the wrong corners.

Might kill him… unless she shows up in the nick of time.

And me? I don’t just write them. I breathe them. Grace flows from my fingertips into the bones of these characters. Sometimes I look up and hours have vanished.

That’s when I know: the river’s running.

Grace isn’t theory.
She’s alive.
In me.

And through me, she walks the streets of New Orleans with a badge, a prayer,
and a heart that’s still learning how to carry itself.

Clue #4: A Fingerprint on the Glass

I was deep in the case when The Yielding Warrior slid across my desk — ten bucks off a social media hustle, like the Tao whispering through algorithms.

Jeff Patterson, a martial artist from Portland, wrote it after 36 years of chasing the mystery. Difference is, he’s stopped chasing. He’s started yielding.

The book isn’t flashy. Doesn’t need to be. It moves with quiet precision: clear definitions, breathwork, meditations that walk with you through life. Wuji. Yin/Yang. Xin Mind — all chaos and reaction. Yi Mind — clear, directed intention. And Qi — that hum under everything.

But here’s the centreline: yielding isn’t weakness. It’s the strength that bends so it won’t break. The wisdom to step aside when the punch comes. Not giving up — giving way.

Patterson takes it beyond the dojo — into traffic, arguments, heartbreak. Yielding is a reed in the wind. Rooted, but free.

And maybe that’s what Grace’s been showing me all along.

I’d been hunting her like a fugitive. Trying to cage her. Define her.

Turns out, she’s been waiting. Teaching.

Grace isn’t a system. She’s a flow.
And to find her, you don’t grip tighter.
You let go.

The case isn’t closed. But for once,
I’m not trying to slam it shut.

I’m learning to yield.

The Big Reveal

All this time, I’ve been trying to pin down Grace while chasing after her supposed twin sister, Flow. But here's the kicker. They ain't twins. They're closer than that. They're absolutely the same. Grace is Flow. Flow is Grace. In the far east, she wore silk, old Chinese-style clothing while whispering verses from the Tao, and in the West, she wore Western clothes and a Celtic Cross around her neck. But she's the same person.
In fact, Grace was Flow before the church muddied the waters. They tried to change and redefine her. She played along, but she never really conformed. That's why people today find her outside the walls of the church.

Both Grace and Flow are about surrender—about receiving rather than striving. The problem was never the concept. It was the container we tried to fit her in. She doesn't fit into the overly simplistic container of easy believism, or the complex theological statements in the Synod of Dort. She was never meant to be conveyed in a cookie or received as a salve for a desperate sinner. She was never meant to be acquired or attained. All along, she's just been inviting you to take her hand...no questions asked.

It turns out grace wasn't hiding. She just changed her dress, slipped out the backdoor of the church, and started dancing by the river.

Take a walk in nature today, kid. Breathe her in. You’ll feel her on the wind.

Peace. And keep asking the big questions,

The Sage Wanderer