Social Graces
Some years ago I flew from New York, where I lived for several decades, back to Oklahoma, where I grew up. I stopped at a Starbucks in Oklahoma City, knowing I wouldn’t see another until my return trip. When it was my turn at the counter, I told her what I’d like, size of cup, kind of milk, sweetener (none for me), flavor (ditto)—as one does at a Starbucks. She looked at me and said, “How are you today?”
I’d forgotten that step.
We don’t ask people, back in New York, how they’re doing. We don’t have time; it’s part of the pulse of the city, it keeps going and if you can’t keep up you probably should move elsewhere. A hamburger joint (that was it’s name, hamburger joint) had a handwritten list of options for your burger, followed by the admonition that it you didn’t know what you wanted you should go to the back of the line. It was rude and wildly popular; one almost never found an open seat.
But in Oklahoma and places like it (Texas, for example), you don’t start with what you want, you start with that social grace. It’s a courtesy that recognizes the humanity of the other person, and even if the courtesy is merely formal, it still does good. That is to say, the young Oklahoman at Starbucks who inquired how I was doing probably asked her question without it being, as it were, a serious question. Still it was a pointer to the reality that I was more than a mere consumer, and she more than a mere dispenser.
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It’s an interesting term, “social graces.” Grace is a gift, unearned and undeserved. Social graces are the gifts that we give each other in society. When we are at our best, we give them to others for no other reason than that we are fellow human beings. Social graces are lubricants that carry us forward, even when we are distracted or bothered.
What do we say? They “take us out of ourselves,” which is itself a peculiar conception. For where do I find my “self”? Is my self somewhere inside my skin, perhaps in my chest, or maybe in my head? It might be better to say they take us to where our self really is, which is not inside us, but in communion with others.
Of course, the most fundamental grace of all is the gift when God calls our name and says, “How are you today?”
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Out & About. My sermon on Pentecost—which, on baptism, is really on the strangeness of God who both speaks to us and “blows” us—is here: https://incarnation.org/worship/sermons-archive/. With thanks to Robert Jenson, the Trinity becomes interesting indeed.