That last bit, “we all long to know that there’s a graciousness at the heart of creation” has been stuck with me all day. Partly because there are echoes of the Catholic I used to be in its phrasing—the idea that we are all hungering for grace is embedded in my very skull; I don’t think it’s ever washing out. But there’s something about graciousness in particular…
These days, I take a bus to work. Once, long ago (i.e., 2012) a coworker described public transportation as an exercise in mutual tolerance—a group of perfectly unaffiliated strangers come together in a crowded, constrained environment with the understanding that this will be mutually painless only insofar as we make it painless for each other. This means: you don’t talk loudly on your cellphone. You listen to music with earphones. You pretend not to be reading what your immediate neighbor is texting her friends. You squeeze yourself into as small a space as you can and say liberally “sorry” and “excuse me.”
And still…..there are older people on my route, and pregnant women, and a couple folks with the big motorized wheelchairs. And every time, I’m still surprised—touched, even, by the people who very gently brush an older woman’s elbow and ask “Would you…?” and when she nods, gather their things and stand. The nervy-looking young man who rockets to his feet to offer the pregnant woman somewhere to sit. CTA buses are somewhat-to-mostly ADA accessible, but only if the people sitting in the designated seats get up and lift the plastic, ugly-colored pew they were sitting on to make room. I’ve never heard the bus driver do more than start to lower the access ramp; the people in those seats nod, gather up purses and laptop bags and coffee cups and make their way to a convenient hanging strap.
It’s not anything profound, it’s not special. This should be the way the world works on every level, the ordinary and rote grind of mindfulness of how others move through the world—even perfect strangers, stuck in traffic on Lakeshore Drive. I think often graciousness is a habit, a rote lesson learned and reiterated and made ordinary by its consistent application. Saying “thank you” is gracious even if it isn’t meant, small talk with coworkers is gracious even without any sort of real or genuine connection. Graciousness, the unthinking social response to need, to difference, to the other people you occupy the world with, and all others who you don’t personally know, can be deeply and movingly virtuous by virtue of its existence. Still mundane, absolutely, but….making it a part of our ordinary reality gestures to an even better one, where the good and the gracious are even more boring and commonplace.
For contrast: there are a number of times I’ve run to catch a bus (or watched someone else run for the bus while I’m on it) and every time the bus driver waits for you feels like an unearned gift. The bus driver is not obligated—they have a proscribed route and a certain timeline for fulfilling it, they are under no obligation to wait for panting, half-running person wind-milling her arms in an attempt to stall. But for me, the difference between grace and graciousness is that exactly. We all want to believe that at the heart of creation is an elevated kindness, a true and earnest desire to help; I believe that. And there’s certainly evidence of it in graciousness—last week when a man slipped in the slush of Michigan Ave and strangers rushed to help him up; a woman hanging off a pole lost her grip as the bus stopped suddenly, and another woman was already reaching out to steady her. But there’s also those situations you can’t write off as habit or instinct—sometimes there’s a choice, and you can either keep going and serving your self and your agenda, or you can stop, and let someone skip-run across the intersection and catch their bus.