NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
SUNDAY SPECTATOR
June 5, 2005
Earthly grace
Some affinities or aptitudes begin in early life; some cut in as we grow older. With all of them, I suspect, we are born; just as we are born susceptible to certain diseases. But not all of them right away: they click in as the years pass. Some environmental influence may provide the trigger, but the propensity to succumb was on its own timetable. The result is hit or miss, for both the stress and the weakness must combine to produce the catastrophe.The same, positively. How many people, myself for instance, have discovered by accident that we had some unusual hidden talent. In my case, for estimating volumes. It feels innate, yet it couldn’t have been there before; for I can remember once having needed it. Nor could I have learnt it, for I had no use for this talent in the interim. I have a small, framed photograph of my paternal grandmother, in my kitchen. She is receiving the prize of an expensive refrigerator, on a TV show in the 1950s. Kate Aitken, then Canada’s most famous media chef, is presenting it on behalf of the Amana corporation. Grandma won the thing by guessing precisely what it could hold. I look at the picture, and it all fits together. My little talent must come from her. The reader will now think of his own examples. The mystery of what is in us is sometimes no less than the mystery of what is outside. And the child-like condition, of not yet knowing what we can do, persists through life. I know, for instance, that I have no aptitude for sanctity. But then, I’ve never tried to be a saint. Maybe if I tried, I’d get lucky. The grace with which we strive being something that may come to us from an unexpected quarter: from the past, or the future, as much as from the present. It may be woven into the fabric of events. We will leave sanctity aside for today. As Augustine (facetiously) put it, “Lord give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” Today I’m thinking about a more earthly “grace”. The mediaevals knew all about it, and even our immediate ancestors had some idea. They would often refer to talent as “a grace”. What they meant by it, out of their instinctive faith and belief, was that talents and skills -- beauty, strength, quickness, discernment -- are gifts from heaven. (Unequally distributed, by the way.) The word is still used, even if we have lost hold of the concept. We say that a dancer or a runner or a skater is “graceful”. Of course, this person has been practising for years. But so have others who are not so graceful. The spark in Wayne Gretsky was beautiful to behold, even when he was not setting up goals, or even near the play: a knowingness in every stride and gesture. The person who ever saw Willie Mays in baseball, or Gary Sobers in cricket, will know just what I mean. They had, bigtime, something which could not be taught. And this grace takes many large and small forms. I have a son who is Down Syndrome, who has extraordinary emotional grace. He has the ability to read what is in the air -- the feelings of the people around him, for better and worse -- then bring good from the situation. This is an innate skill, which has been maturing in him for years. It is something which requires no conventional intelligence. You can almost see him, like a Gretsky, in what he does: getting behind the net for the pass out front, and dancing out of the way of checkers. Last week, by chance, I discovered a young potter. First I saw her wares in a shop window in Toronto, then met her, because she was manning the till (her name is Alison Urquhart). Very young, outwardly shy, inwardly sure of herself. Not well trained, as I could judge from my own critical knowledge of pottery. And must have started only recently in the craft. But knows what she is doing, with unfailing taste, and a skill that is leaping ahead. Humble, and self-assured -- a combination that is itself a sign of promise in any artist. Where there is life there is hope. My recent displeasure with Canadian politics and society must be balanced by this apprehension of grace. As a society, we may be going down; but there are people coming who may lift us again. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top