Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Amazing grace
Giving thanks a grounding ritual
Brett Levanto and his family had never said grace before meals, not regularly, anyway. But what began as a temporary challenge transformed them in small ways.
This year, his daughter decided to start saying grace before dinner during Lent, and he and his wife were encouraging, thinking it would be a nice thing to try out. He was surprised at the effects it had.
“It’s just been lovely. I really dig the way it creates a structure,” says Levanto, 38, who lives in Alexandria, Va., and works for a small lobbying and law firm. “Everyone has to get to the table and be together and not be distracted. We focus on where we are.”
The family sits, holds hands, and takes turns saying a free-form grace. They might say what they’re thankful for, or speak about a sick friend who is in their thoughts. The parents aren’t prescriptive about what a proper grace is supposed to sound like, he says. “If my son’s heart is telling him to thank God for mac and cheese, well, thank God for mac and cheese!”
They all say “amen,” and then dinner is off and running. Although the grace might take less than a minute, it sets a crucial tone. “It creates a grounding feeling — a moment of stillness,” he says. “I feel like our dinners at home are much better now — like, ‘Now we are together, and this is what we’re doing.’ I mean, I’m not going to say we have Rockwellian dinners or anything.”
That’s a reference to painter Norman Rockwell, of course, whose images of wholesome middle-American dining include the iconic “Saying Grace,” painted for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1951. It depicts a young boy and an older woman bowing their heads in a crowded diner, as other patrons, seemingly engaged in the more familiar rituals of modern life — smoking or reading the newspaper — look on. At the time, it might have felt to many Americans that this tradition was fading.
But it hasn’t. The state of grace in contemporary America is hard to quantify, though the practice remains prevalent: Almost half of all Americans said they regularly took a moment before meals to give thanks, according to a 2017 poll by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The act of saying grace — broadly defined as a moment before a meal in which people give thanks — varies.
For Pat Cuadros, the words are always the same: The Catholic grace that begins “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts …” has always been the start to her meals. The setting varies, though. She has said those words — sometimes to herself, silently, or aloud when she’s with other observant friends — in Chipotles, in airplanes, and in restaurants — or over a Thanksgiving meal.
If she were dining with a new friend, she’d ask if it was OK to take a moment to pray silently before they ate. “Everyone has always been OK with it,” says Cuadros, a 34-year-old writer and editor for the Department of Agriculture who lives outside of Fairfax, Va. “It can be a conversation starter. But in college, I always had a backup plan — I would think, ‘If it’s going to be really awkward, I can pray in the car ahead of time.’”
Cuadros says the ritual feels automated in some ways — after all, she has repeated the same words thousands of times. Still, she always finds meaning in them, and relies on the practice to remind her of her family and values.
“It doesn’t ever lose meaning because I am truly grateful, and I know the moment is going to fortify me and reinvigorate me for the day,” she says. “Growing up in a single-parent home, you really do appreciate every meal.”
To Kenneth Minkema, executive editor of the Jonathan Edwards Center at the Yale Divinity School, grace serves several purposes. Reciting the same words together or participating in a regular ritual creates a feeling of connection with those around us, he says. “It serves to strengthen and confirm the bond of family or community,” he says. “It helps to acknowledge that we are one.” And across religions, it is also an acknowledgment of the source of the food before you. “There is the creator/God but also other people, the earth, and the moral responsibilities that go along with that,” he says. “It also has a way of pulling you inward and reminding you of those responsibilities.”
People who routinely say grace do so for reasons both spiritual and practical.
Terrence Geary, 50, a food-systems consultant and real estate professional in Newport, R.I., didn’t usually say grace at home with his wife and their young son. But his son recently stumbled on a pre-meal meditation track on his wife’s phone, and became entranced with it. At first, Geary — who is an avowed food lover — says he found himself impatient as he watched his piping-hot rigatoni grow cold while the family followed the instructions to appreciate the smells and the colors of the dishes before digging in.
But he came around, he says, once he realized how the repeated ritual offered his son structure and stability — something that has been in short supply in these turbulent times. “We moved around a little in the last year and a half,” Geary said. “So anything we can do to make him feel at home and feel grounded, like life is getting back to normal, is a good thing.”