REsources for Living
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What do you think of when you hear the word grace? Maybe a dancer who moves with elegance and ease, the picture of smooth and graceful motion. Or maybe someone who knows just the right thing to say in any given situation with any person, the picture of social grace. Or maybe grace is a kind of forgiveness, a little extra wiggle room, like when you get a grace period to turn in your homework or to pay a bill.
It could be that you have a Christian understanding of grace as the unending generosity of God in our lives, the presence of love and forgiveness whatever our sins might be. You could think of grace as unearned good fortune, or as the miracle that lifts our hearts even in the midst of hard times. And you wouldn’t be wrong if you thought any and all of these things. Grace, it turns out, is a pretty big word for only five letters.
Which makes it a bit surprising that we also use the word grace to describe a little prayer or blessing that we say before a meal. Maybe you have a table grace that you use in your own family. As my daughter was growing up, every evening before dinner we would sing: “Thank you for this food, this food, this glorious, glorious foodand the animals, and the vegetables, and the minerals that made it possible.” We were clear that the cook was one of the animals that made it possible. We never really said who we were thanking for the food and the animals and the vegetables and the minerals. It didn’t matter. The point was that we paused for just a moment to say “Thank you.”
Grace and gratitude, it turns out, are pretty closely related. You can see it in the Spanish and Italian words for thank you, gracias and grazie. Somehow, being grateful fills us with grace. Being grateful reminds us that so much of what we have in life is unearned, the product of a generous planet and generous people across the generations who have made possible so much of what we have and who we are.
Being grateful allows us to move through the world with a bit more grace, as we acknowledge the kindness of others, and as we remember that even in the hard times we can still find places of joy. Being grateful gives us the opportunity to really appreciate the grace periods when we’re given another chance.
And yes, it’s good to practice gratitude as many times a day as possible. But the fact is that whether we’re talking about homework, exercise or gratitude, we do better at remembering to do something important when we have a time set aside to attend to it. Before dinner turns out to be a really good time to gather your family together to practice a bit of gratitude. Saying grace doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. In fact, it’s probably better to think of a table grace as something small enough that you can say (or sing) it before your food starts to get cold.
Maybe each person can share something good about their day or something they’re grateful for. Maybe you can take turns having each member of the family say a few words of thanks. Maybe, like my family, you want to have words that you say every evening, a ritual that grounds you in the familiar. Maybe someone in your family wants to come up with words you’ll say before dinner or maybe you’d rather use something that’s already out there in the world.
Maybe your family gives thanks to God. (When I was a teen our UU youth group used to chant before meals: “Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub. Yaaaaay, God!”) Maybe God is not a part of your family’s theology, and you want to thank the beings who made your meal possible. Maybe you just want to sit in grateful silence for a moment after you light a candle. Grace, as they say, abounds, and there is no right or wrong way to bring grace to a meal.
I encountered one of my favorite table graces when I had dinner with a woman and daughter whom I had just met. As they did every evening before dinner we took hands and said: “We are lucky. We are lucky to be. We are lucky to be here. We are lucky to be here together.” Then we squeezed each other’s hands and smiled and started passing the food. It was simple, quick and full of grace.
Grace happens when we sit down together. Grace happens when we remember that we are blessed by so much that we didn’t create, starting with the fact of our own lives. Grace happens when we appreciate all that surrounds us, the unique beauty the world around us at any given moment. Grace happens when we take each other’s hands in love, when we look in one another’s eyes and remember that we are, in fact, so lucky to be here together.
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