how many loved your moments of glad grace.

is a particular alliteration that is one of my favorites in all the literature I’ve ever read.

Glad grace.

Grace is a concept central to Christianity, of course, but I probably-quite-consciously avoid faith-tinged definitions in both my reading and use of grace as a concept. I prefer it literal–this glad grace–as a learned, cultivated quality of consideration for others, of awareness of what is beyond oneself.

The transitive verb form is nice as well: to confer dignity.

And in both senses to be glad: to be willing. To be willing to look outward and extend to someone else a thought, a care, a consideration.

And perhaps all we can aspire to are moments. Glad grace as a perpetual state of being sounds exhausting. But a moment? Doable. I’m looking at my arm as I think through this one, which reminds me of Wallace, which reminds me about caring for others in petty, unsexy ways day in and day out. Glad grace.