Defining Grace
The Dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca, dating from 16th century Italy, defines grace as "belleza... che rapisce altrui ad amore." Grace is beauty which seduces one unto love. Grace is the prayer before nourishment, it is the passing of power through blood, it is a classical muse, it is a verb, it is liberation, it is a head-ransom, it is a gazelle, it is simplicity, it is complexity, it is sanctifying, it is controversial, it is desired, it is metrical, it is ubiquitous, it is rare, it is actual. "Grace is in all, yet beyond all," quotes a medieval anchoress. According to Castiglione, grace springs from "that virtue opposite to affectation," as an unconscious extension of a certain je ne sais quoi within the soul. Grace is the nature of language, of number, of beat, of silence. Grace is pervasively elusive.
Grace is fueled by its own roots in the Greek charis, with its shadows of liberality and courtesy forwarded to Latin rhetoric, as the tripartite gratia, functioning as attractiveness, favour, and gratitude. The word flushed the face of Europe in its own blushing migration from tongue to tongue, from Italian gratia to Portuguese graça to Spanish gracia to French grâce. Gliding from thought to pen to heritage, grace seeped over the Channel into Chaucer's father's smalltalk and a pair of listening ears waxed attentive. The patients of his Doctor's Tale questioned, "Goode fader shal I dye? Is ther no grace? is ther no remedye?" Grace is the ripping of change through the fabric of time, loosing the weave to weft in bright, unwashed strands of witty innovation. "Is not great grace to helpe him over past, Or free his feet that in the myre sticke fast?" beats the iambic pentameter of the Spenserian stanza in the Faerie Queene. Is it not grace that proved the continuance of its own existence, a linguistic parallel intertwining with the branches of biologic generations to produce the graciousness of freedom in both the fruits of the opposable thumb and the serpent's apple?
A rugged, mottled bark of genealogy stretches gracefully into the blue sky of infinity. Grace, the present of the future, the gift of tomorrow, the cornerstone of the past, vaults us forward into the lives of our progeny and the evolution of our species. Born from the randomly graced confluence of organic chemicals in small pockets of lipid bilayers, life sparked and sputtered.
Today's world is filled with both great tragedy and abundant joy. In a densely populated metropolis like New York City, on a quick walk down a street you encounter homeless people walking among the most prosperous. Unfortunately, nine times out of ten the prosperous person will trudge straight past the one in need without a second thought. A serious problem arises when this happens continually. The problem worsens when you enter a different neighborhood and the well-to-do are far from sight. Many neighborhoods are inhabited only by the most hopeless of poverty - ridden people while others downtown or across the park do not care, or are glad to be separated from them. Such is the problem in New York City today and in Mott Haven in Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace. I have lived in New York City all my life and I had no idea that these problems were going on so close to home. If I live about three miles away from Mott Haven and I am not aware of the situation there, then who is?
The Grace That Keeps This World, by Tom Bailey, is an enthralling novel about the Hazen family who have lived in Lost Lake their whole lives. In this novel Kevin Hazen, a young man of 19, is searching for where he belongs in the world and in his own family. He wants more for his life than the life of survival that his parents have lived their whole lives. The story of the Hazen family is centered around the first day of deer season. For the Hazens, this hunt is more than just a sport. They use the meat of every deer they shoot to help them survive through the winter.
In “The Pardoner’s Tale,” Geoffrey Chaucer masterfully frames an informal homily. Through the use of verbal and situational irony, Chaucer is able to accentuate the moral characteristics of the Pardoner. The essence of the story is exemplified by the blatant discrepancy between the character of the storyteller and the message of his story. By analyzing this contrast, the reader can place himself in the mind of the Pardoner in order to account for his psychology.
The greatest part of these studies have involved the middle-English text Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Extensive work has been done on this alliterative four-part poem written by an anonymous contemporary of Chaucer: feminists have attacked his diatribe against women at the end, or analyzed the interaction between Gawain and the women of Bercilak’s court; those of the D. W. Robertson school seek the inevitable biblical allusions and allegory concealed within the medieval text; Formalists and philologists find endless enjoyment in discovering the exact meaning of certain ambiguous and archaic words within the story. Another approach that yields interesting, if somewhat dated, results, is a Psychological or Archetypal analysis of the poem. By casting the Green Knight in the role of the Jungian Shadow, Sir Gawain’s adventure to the Green Chapel becomes a journey of self-discovery and a quest - a not entirely successful one - for personal individuation.
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How many people practice or celebrate traditions? I would say every person has their own unique traditions but, also share multiple traditions with others. A tradition is defined as an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (Merriam-Webster;1828). Usually when one thinks of a tradition their ideas revolve around a holiday. My initial ideas were Christmas, Easter, or even Thanksgiving. I recognized a trait each of these had in common, saying grace. Saying Grace is a highly respected tradition in my family. At each of the holidays mentioned above, along with others in between, we say grace over our meal before eating.
In America guns have been a part of the country’s society since it’s birth. Throughout history the citizens of the US have used firearms to protect the nation, protect their families, hunt for food and engage in sporting activities. The issue of Guns and gun control is complex. Weighing the rights and liberties of the individual against the welfare and safety of the public has always been a precarious balancing act. In the United States, gun control is one of these tumultuous issues that has both sides firmly entrenched in their positions. Those parties in favor of gun ownership and the freedom to use and keep arms, rely on the fact that the provision for such rights is enshrined in their constitution. In this climate of growing violence, rife with turmoil and crime, gun advocates feel more than ever that their position is justified. As citizens of the “Land of the Free” possessing a gun is a fundamental right, and may even be a necessity... Anti- gun lobbyists point to the same growing violence and gun related crimes in an effort to call on the government to take action. By enacting more laws and stricter control, these people not in favor of guns feel society would be better safer.
Another aspect of this debate is in fact, the lobbyists that are pushing for more lenient or tighter gun-laws. It seems that the lobbyists that wanted stricter firearm-related laws are the ones who have witnessed the damage that criminals and the mentally unstable can really do with a gun in their hand. Those pushing for leniency when it comes to gun legislature state that firearms are trying to protect their right to carry an essential tool for those who want to venture the countryside in search for animals to shoot down for food, clothing or sport. The last aspects of the controversy are the federal and state laws that have decided whether or not concealed wea...
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