The Sheila Variations

Grace as in poise and confidence (Hepburn, &c) or grace as in a benefit from on high?

If the former: confidence in motion
If the latter: detectable intangible gifts

-bp

Thanks, bp ... I meant the latter. Edited the post.

How wonderful, your word choice: "detectable" right next to "intangible". Kind of says it all, don't it?

A subtle, quiet, agreeable, morally-anchored manner of getting along with others?

Wait. That's stupid.

Emily, you crack me up.

I actually thought it was pretty good.

If you could trap and distill it by defining it, that would no longer be it. OK, so that sounds cliched, but any attempt at description fails to express something that can only be experienced.

"any attempt at description fails to express something that can only be experienced."

That was the whole focus of the conversation last night. That's exactly why I'm asking today - and also why I titled this post what I did. I know there's not a real answer, but - does that mean we shouldn't talk about it at all?

It's a mystery, "grace" seems to lie between the cracks - and yet we all know what it is - we all have experienced it.

What a great topic. I love Emily's definition...but I'd add...something about...good hearted classiness...or kindness...somewhere in there too!

Grace is a gift. It’s not tangible, but you know when it has been given. On second thought maybe the tangibility is in the knowing.

Maybe it's one of those "I don't know how to describe it, but I know it when I see it" type things? Like irony?

Or pornography?

Pornography's pretty easy to explain - "two or more people boinking for the paid entertainment of others; see whore."

Maybe it's "obscenity" then - didn't some Supreme Court judge say, in an obscenity case, "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it"?

Yeppers. Potter Stewart or something to the like was his name.

Sheil...i was in Vermont this weekend with the circus kids...we discussed my expectations for them. I said i was aware that we all have issues..good and bad qualities...but what was important was how he manuevered through life with all this baggage... whether we carried our burdens with ease or stumbled around bumping into people. A exquisite young girl (14 yrs old) piped up and said she knew what i meant...its called "Grace" she said. Out of the mouth of...-Mitchell

To me grace must be understood along with justice. Justice occurs when someone receives what they deserve based on their actions. (This can be either good or bad.)

Grace is when someone is spared the negative consequences of their actions due to another party intervening on their behalf.

I've always heard it was God's influence in the mortal world.

Or maybe that large scary woman in one of the really bad Roger Moore James Bond movies.

Grace - when something is freely bestowed, regardless of whether it's deserved or not.

Charity, love, self-sacrifice on behalf of others...

That's as close as I can get (but not as close as many of your other readers have gotten).

Grace is a calm bearing that projects an inner peace, awareness, and empathy; and includes an ease that speaks of openness and being completely nonjudgmental and in the moment when interacting with others.

Five friends and I, in three canoes, once set out from a portage onto Little Saganaga Lake in the BWCA on a Fall morning. The water was like glass it was so still. There was fog around the islands on the lake and bright blue sky above us. No one else was around at all, and not one of us said a word, we just quietly paddled to the next portage.

Rip me if you want but that was Grace.

"The Road Less Traveled" goes into the phenomenon of grace. Interestingly enough, no one I know has ever read this book except myself.

But that is not my post.

When I think of grace, a few quotes from a favorite movie come to mind...

This is not just "something that happens", this cannot be "one of those things", this please, cannot be that this was just "a matter of chance".

There are stories of coincidence and chance, of intersections and strange things told, and which is which and nobody knows; and we generally say, "Well, if that was in a movie, I wouldn't believe it." No, these strange things happen all the time.

So there ;)

Dave E.: Why on earth would I rip you for something so beautifully told??

In my opinion, grace can only be pinned down when describing a moment of beauty like that. For me, it was making what felt like interminable eye contact with a deer, at dawn, beside a lake in Minnesota. I cannot describe what I felt in that moment, but to me it was grace.

Mercutio: I have read Road Less Traveled multiple times.

So there.

Lots of people must be reading it since it has stayed on the best seller lists for like 25 years now.

Mitchell -

I love that girl. She is wise beyond her years.

Grace seems to me to be the ability to handle with humility and without fear both success and failure equally.

I don't have it.

But I'm trying my best.

Grace--a sublime sense of deliverance and/or contentment.

(That deep-in-your-bones epiphany that you are both happy and alive. And realizing it, you can't help but smile.)

you'll should check out the movie "state of grace", ed harris sean penn and gary oldman, what is a state of grace? good question, good movie. Grace - they way you carry your self, the manner in which you preform certien things.
i have seen a women cut garlic once in such a gracefull way, i loved it, it was perfect, the way she did it. also check out "the last samurai", the way the "samurais" do things, wether its tea or war, its gracefull, perfect...