Grace

The word grace has had religious connotations for centuries. Religion has presented it essentially in two forms: something earned from or something freely given by a god. In either case, the human being on the receiving end of supposed divine grace was better off than those who were not. Grace was seen as a blessing, an advantage, or a desirable elite status.
I would contend that we would be a lot better off if we simply recognized the concept of grace as a desirable human characteristic and sought to maximize its existence among us. After all, it is we who gave our gods the capacity to bestow it in the first place so why not own it ourselves to produce as much of it as we can. Of all the shortages we can see around us today (jobs, money, happiness, civility) grace is the least present of all.
But just what is this humanistic grace of which I speak? And what is it not? When we think of it at all, it is usually in the form of an adjective: graceful. The dancers who appear on So You Think You Can Dance are often viewed as graceful in their movement even when they are dancing a very rigorous tango or salsa. But the program itself is not at all graceful in that it emphasizes judgment and competition as the measure of success, thus producing a pair of winners and a host of losers. There is little grace in the outcome. There is also no grace in the name of the program which throws down a gauntlet-like challenge and dares you to prove that you can do what you think you can. It’s no encouraging set of words like The Little Engine That Could.
When I was coming of age in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, American Bandstand captivated a whole generation of teenagers who admired the dancing skills of the cast members who were never put in the position of becoming winners or losers. They were all winners much the same way the Mouseketeers were on the Mickey Mouse Club created by Walt Disney. The viewing audiences in both cases were given a variety of personalities to admire and even emulate. The dancing was good, but as a viewer I never felt the need to see a showdown in order to determine who the best dancer was on either program. Must everything be reduced to winners and losers? Was not the grace of it the fact that they were dancing?
Discourse has suffered the same fate of late as dance. Diatribe has replaced dialogue as the means of communication. The win-at-all-cost monologue championed by self-appointed and self-righteous talk show hosts whose might- (following) makes-right attitude has replaced the measured, nuanced rhetoric of well-mannered and thoughtful pursuers of truth like Walter Lippmann and William F. Buckley. Blind certitude is asserted in the face of complexity with a vehemence that precludes any humility or doubt. It is about winning, the truth already having been established. The idea of being graceful is brushed aside as a sign of weakness.
A friend once remarked that if we, as human beings, were completely uninhibited, we would sing to each other rather than talk. Life would be a combination of opera and ballet. It would be about the grace of it all, not the meanness. It would be about bringing out the best in each other in everyday life, which would mean bringing out the grace each of us has inherent in us as human beings. Grace, by my definition, goes beyond mere civility or generosity or art. It is the combination of all human qualities that produce goodness in all its forms and facets. It is the combination of qualities that help us harmonize with our habitats and sing the song of life. It is about singing rather than bickering; dancing rather than trudging; skipping rather than plodding. It is about painting ourselves out of corners rather than into them, and being the am and drinking the tea in team.
The Puritans thought they knew what grace was and believed that you either had it or you didn’t. They had located it in their god, personified it (he) and then doled it out to the select few whose crops did not fail or ships did not sink. We’re still seeing the remnants of that legacy in those who tell us that because they are materially successful or know (for certain) how that happens, that they are the elect who must convey their wisdom to their hopeful followers. Ultimately it is self-serving rationalization, not true grace.
The question is not “So you think you can dance?” The question is will you.