Sarah Kaufman

The grace of Frank Deford

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You didn’t have to be a sports insider to love the work of sportswriter Frank Deford. You only had to appreciate drama and the human heart and expert storytelling. I’ve been thinking about him with a mix of sadness and profound gratitude since he died on May 28. Back when I was in college (ahem, decades ago) I started listening to his penetrating essays for NPR on the deeper meaning of athletics; moving meditations not only on great achievement but on great struggles. Such compassion came through in his voice and his words.

I saw another side of his extraordinary generosity when he gave me two of the greatest gifts an author can receive: early support, and a blurb.

Since it was clear that Mr. Deford had an eye for elegance of motion and for the inspiring grace that humans can achieve, I had hoped he might enjoy my book, “The Art of Grace,” especially given my focus on athletes. I wrote to him to ask if he would take a look at the manuscript.

Joy of joys, he quickly agreed, making my heart leap, and a short while after receiving the manuscript he followed up with my editor at W.W. Norton to say that he was “thoroughly taken” with it.  

“It’s not the sort of work that I’m usually sent,” he wrote in an email, “and I’m delighted to have had the chance to read it.” And he included the following endorsement:  
 
“So that’s it.  It takes only a short while in reading ‘The Art of Grace’ to realize that Sarah Kaufman has nailed it, that she has detected precisely what it is that has changed us so for the worse.  We are suffering what she calls, simply, a “grace gap” –– and it is not just that Cary Grant, her hero, has gone, with few enough Roger Federers left to remind us of that easy elegance.  Rather, grace in all its manifestations has given way to coarseness and impatience, and, for all our vaunted technology, she shows us to be a more diminished species. Ms. Kaufman’s book is itself most graceful, ever knowing.
 
Best,
Frank Deford”

Mr. Deford also suggested that he be identified on the book jacket not only as a sportswriter but as the author of “Alex: The Life of a Child,” the memoir he wrote in 1983 about his daughter Alexandra, who struggled with cystic fibrosis and died at age 8. Of the many books he’d written, he explained, this was the one that dealt with grace. The book is almost unbearably beautiful: the composure of a wise innocent, the helplessness of love, and the grace that endures. It’s no wonder he was so generous with others. I’ll always feel fortunate and so very grateful to have briefly crossed his path, and to have felt the lasting grace of his great heart.

For a good account of Mr. Deford’s life and a passage from “Alex: The Life of a Child,” read The Washington Post’s obituary.

For more about Alex and her father, read this Washington Post feature from 1986.

My Mother’s Lesson in Grace

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My mom, Catharine, with her day-old grandson Asa.

For Mother’s Day, and in honor of my mother, whose kindness and eye for beauty inspire me every single day, I’m posting an edited-down excerpt about her from “The Art of Grace.” Her lesson in acceptance and inclusion marked me deeply as a child; it taught me something profound about considering other people’s feelings, and the rewards that flow from that:

When I turned six, my mother told me I could have ponies at my birthday party—a little girl’s dream—if I invited everyone in my first-grade class.

Fine by me!

Everyone, she continued. Including Dennis. (Not his real name.)

Dennis, the boy whose pale skin and hair made him look transparent, barely there. The kid I was very sure had the worst sort of cooties. This I knew, though I didn’t know much else about him. Dennis was given to nosebleeds and a kind of spastic jitteriness, and like the other kids in the class, I did my best to avoid him.

I think I shed some tears over the ultimatum, but I really wanted those ponies, so Dennis was in….

And on the appointed Saturday of my party, a horse trailer pulled up the alley; three squat, lethargic, darling animals were saddled up by our gate, and an excited line of children formed for turns around the backyard. I remember hopping up and down a lot. I remember going first. I remember what everything looked like from high atop my pony as I traveled grandly past the dirt patch where I made mud pies, past my little playhouse, past the other children, past Dennis, his pale face flashing even paler in the afternoon sun. He was clapping his hands, hopping up and down, as jazzed up as everyone else.

And I remember gazing over to our gnarled, solitary apricot tree, newly in bloom and magnificent, where my mother stood chatting pleasantly with Dennis’s mother. His mom was older, grandmotherly, and the white pinned-up coil of her hair almost disappeared against the blossoms. As I watched them, his mother and my mother together—the surprise of it still electrifies this memory—it registered that my mother was taking care of her guest with the same calm, sensitive attention with which she treated, well, everyone. She was looking after Dennis’s mom, making sure she had someone to talk to, delivering the unspoken message to her that her son, so often alone at school, was welcome at our house….

It took a while to grasp, but as I put together the view from my pony on that beautiful day in my backyard, I came to understand something as startling as it was liberating, heart-opening: everyone should have a good time at my party, and I wasn’t the most important person at it.

Dennis had seemed so alien to me. He might as well have been a helium balloon, fragile, not quite of this world, barely connected to the rest of us. But I learned three things about him that afternoon that anchored him, pulling him back down to earth. I learned that he liked ponies, just as I did; that he had a mother, just as I did; and most of all, that his feelings, and her feelings, mattered as much as anybody else’s. My mother taught me that, by her own graceful example.

It was a good party. And a great birthday, where I felt myself grow up a little.

–from “The Art of Grace,” by Sarah L. Kaufman. All rights reserved.

Grace and “The Little Mermaid”

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While preparing to review a ballet inspired by “The Little Mermaid,” I came across a subtle but profound message about grace that Hans Christian Andersen weaves through his famous fairytale.

First of all, let’s clear away the Disney version of “The Little Mermaid,” which takes Andersen’s dark tale and turns it into a standard princess story about winning the prince and living happily ever after. Contrast this with Andersen’s mermaid, who suffers excruciating pain and disfigurement, never has a chance with the man she loves, and loses him to another woman.

Great children’s story, right? Well, there is a happy ending, but it’s not what you’d expect. The mermaid ends up realizing she doesn’t need a man to be happy. This is in 1836! Yes, this young woman of character has everything she needs within herself–because of her graceful nature–and she joins a community of like-hearted females, neither mortal nor mermaid, but floaty, unseen creatures of pure spirit.

Remember how Andersen always sides with the outsider (“The Ugly Duckling,” “The Little Match Girl,” and more)? True to form, his little mermaid, youngest of seven sisters, is a misfit in her watery world. No one understands her restless spirit, lack of vanity and yearning for love. I believe he’s drawing a distinction between this virtuous creature and the historical depiction of mermaids as deceitful sexual predators, singing sailors to their deaths.

One night, the little mermaid falls in love with a mortal man whom she rescues from drowning. She vows to somehow become human and join him on land; to do this she visits the sea witch, who cuts out her tongue to use in a potion that will turn her tail into legs. “But if you take away my voice, what is left for me?” the mermaid asks, before the tongue is taken.

“Your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes; surely with these you can enchain a man’s heart,” replies the witch. She is ruthless, but she is right: Grace remains, even after the mermaid has lost her ability to speak and sing.

Forever silenced, and in constant pain from her new limbs, the girl remains devoted to her prince. Despite what she’s lost, she retains her true heart, her loving nature, and–Andersen is very clear about this–her grace. Grace is what buoys her in the dry, unfamiliar land in which she now moves.

“All who saw her wondered at her graceful-swaying movements,” Andersen tells us. Yet the mermaid is new to walking on land, and her steps are painful, so how could this be? I believe he means for us to understand that grace is in her spirit, her hopeful attitude, her perspective. Unlike her beautiful singing voice, it is something no one can take away. Her pain was terrible, “but she bore it willingly, and stepped as lightly by the prince’s side as a soap-bubble.” This grace of movement is a reflection of her love. It is a spiritual force infusing her movements from the inside out.

Still, she doesn’t win over the prince, who’s stuck on another woman and plans to marry her. This, according to the sea witch’s spell, will mean death for the little mermaid. Andersen compares her terrible failed sacrifice with that of her sisters, who come to her with a plan. They’ve given up their hair for an enchanted knife; once their little sister kills the prince with it, she’ll revert back to mermaidhood. But their act of love is tainted; their sister’s homecoming rests on blood.

Of course, the little mermaid refuses them. She nobly leaves her prince to his new wife and throws herself into the sea, expecting to die. And yet! “Hundreds of transparent beautiful beings” surround her, lift her up; she has become like them, lighter than air, floating out of the foam towards the clouds. She is now “among the daughters of the air.”

Now Andersen shows us how the little mermaid can acquire the true treasure–an immortal soul. But he also has a broader and quite practical point about the actions that we take, and how our behaviors can take on a spiritual, even angelic quality. This is something his young readers (and older ones) can carry out in their lives. It echoes what threads through “The Art of Grace,” in the wisdom I gleaned from my interviews and research into ideas going back to the ancients: Grace is about giving, loving, and thinking of others. And so it turns out that our little mermaid is in an even better place than if she’d won the prince’s heart. These “daughters of the air” have adopted her because she is like them–generous, kind and helpful. And there’s more:

“A mermaid has not an immortal soul, nor can she obtain one unless she wins the love of a human being,” one of these creatures tells her. “On the power of another hangs her eternal destiny.” But no matter: The daughters of the air can get themselves their own immortal soul ”by their good deeds.” They are independent women!

What kinds of good deeds, you may ask? “We fly to warm countries, and cool the sultry air that destroys mankind with pestilence. We carry the perfume of the flowers to spread health and restoration.” After 300 years of doing such environmental works (Andersen was quite the progressive), and “giving all the good in our power,” they are able to receive an immortal soul. And they tell her: “You, poor little mermaid, have tried with your whole heart to do as we are doing, you have suffered and endured and raised yourself to the spirit-world by your good deeds.”

In other words, she became one of these exquisite celestial beings because of her grace–her loving, generous, compassionate nature and actions. This, I find, is a beautiful message.

It’s a message that must have comforted the author himself, a lifelong outsider who never married and had unrequited affections for men and women. Some researchers have noted that “The Little Mermaid” may have been inspired by an ill-fated romance with a male friend who decided to get married. This could explain the mermaid’s loss of voice and the dramatic descriptions of her pain–allusions, perhaps, to being silenced and heartbroken at a time when Andersen could not be open about his feelings. This only makes the story more poignant, and Andersen’s notion of grace all the more exceptional, and powerful.

Related story: My review of Hamburg Ballet’s ‘Little Mermaid’: Adrift in a Sea of Despair

The arts & our empathy problem

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Vice President-elect Mike Pence got a talking-to by the cast of the Broadway show “Hamilton,” when Pence was in the audience last Friday. “We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir,” said Brandon Victor Dixon, who played Aaron Burr. He spoke from the stage after the performance, reading remarks written by the cast–a cast which is multicultural and multiracial. “But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”

These statements became front-page news, as President-elect Donald Trump tweeted an angry command to the “Hamilton” cast to “apologize!” But even more important than what the cast of “Hamilton” thinks of Mike Pence is this: What does Pence think of “Hamilton”? What’s his reaction to the show, in which the contributions of immigrants are celebrated as central to the nation’s founding? Did it cause him to feel even a tiny bit differently about immigration, and about the people that his campaign has targeted?

[Here’s the Washington Post story on what “Hamilton’s” cast said to Mike Pence.]

I’ve been thinking about the arts and their power to elicit empathy ever since I attended a panel on Islamophobia a few weeks ago, organized by the Atlantic Council. The event was titled “Overcoming Myths and Engaging in a Better Conversation.” It was a timely discussion, with Europe facing a flood of refugees from the Middle East and Trump calling for a ban on Muslims, and for “extreme vetting.” Academics, journalists and diplomats shared views on the damaging and ill-informed ways that Muslims are perceived and treated in Europe and America.

One of my favorite authors, the brilliant religious scholar Karen Armstrong, made cogent points on the commonalities and false divisions among faiths, and the fatal consequences of misperceptions. Others stressed the importance of recognizing that Muslims are not a monolithic group, but are a diverse community with many different worldviews.

I had been invited by Vuslat Dogan Sabanci, who chaired the panel. She is the publisher and CEO of Hurriyet, a daily newspaper in Turkey, and she graciously reached out to me after reading my book. Grace, in fact, figured prominently in her opening remarks. What’s most important in starting the better conversation that she hoped for, she said, is to listen.

“I first mean good listening, which is listening with the goal of understanding the other side,” Dogan Sabanci said. “So the other side can talk fearlessly in the field of respect–and grace.”

At the lunch that followed, a reporter from Al Jazeera spoke up. “We’ve done a good job of reporting on Islamophobia,” he said. “But how do we create empathy?”

That is the most important question, isn’t it? Front pages are filled with reports of fleeing refugees and violence and cruelties, but does this news arouse fellow feeling, or does it stoke fears that further divide us? Will even more panels and commissions and community dialogues start to warm our hearts?

I suggest we turn to the arts. The arts stimulate our sympathies, because in viewing art we can feel something of another person’s experience. The artist leaves palpable traces of his or her emotions, sensations and imagination in the artwork. And in our response, we feel some measure of these sensations in our own bodies. We’re not feeling exactly the same thing that the artist felt, but there is a bridging of artist and viewer. Our immediate, visceral reaction mingles with our imagination in a world of more feeling than intellect, of pure human connection.

“What brings fellow-feeling into being is the imagination,” wrote Leon Wieseltier in an op-ed in Washington Post. He goes on to quote Adam Smith, in his Theory on Moral Sentiments: “Sympathy, as Smith observed, is produced ‘by changing places in fancy with the sufferer.'”

I’m privileged to have this experience many nights in any given month, through my work as the Washington Post’s dance critic. This past summer offered up an especially powerful example. I had been invited to give a talk at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, in Becket, Mass., and while there, I saw a transcendent performance by Compagnie Herve Koubi, a troupe of 17 men from Algeria and Burkina Faso. Koubi had grown up in France, and in his twenties he discovered, to his astonishment, that his parents were Algerian, a fact that they had concealed from him. Disoriented and unmoored, Koubi finally traveled to that country seeking his tribe. He found it among the urban street dancers. Many of them became members of his company, and they are exquisite: athletic and musical and deeply sensitive. The work they performed at Jacob’s Pillow was titled “Ce que le jour doit a la nuit” (“What the day owes the night”). The music included Bach and traditional Sufi chants. The dancers tumbled, twisted, plunged and soared in a fearless blend of martial arts, capoeira and modern dance, communicating aching vulnerability, ineffable yearning and the strength of brotherhood. Watching them, you fell in love with these beautiful young men who were so elegantly and courageously opening their souls on the stage.

“These are the people Donald Trump wants to keep out of our country?” I heard someone in the audience ask rhetorically, and incredulously, afterward. The kind of understanding that happens through art hits hard, and goes deep. It’s not a cliche to say that boundaries dissolve through the arts and their realm of feeling. I’d like to see more investment in exporting art across borders, bringing Muslim artists into contact with non-Muslims, whether through live dance and theater, or film (“Desert Dancer,” about a dance company launched in Iran, where dancing was banned, was poignant and eye-opening), or exhibits such as the Smithsonian’s “Art of the Qu’ran.” I’d like to see embassies help bring artists overseas, with funding help from organizations that might otherwise host panels and policy meetings. Talk is fine, but hearts are opened not in lectures but through the workings of the imagination. This is the landscape of vulnerability, and the birthplace of openness, understanding and, finally, empathy.

Related story: Leon Wieseltier’s essay, “How voters’ personal suffering overtook reason–and brought us Donald Trump”

“The Art of Grace” Inspires a Dance

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dancer

I got the news in a tweet:

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With the huge debt of gratitude I owe the dancers and choreographers who have inspired me over the years, this is gorgeous icing on an already decadent cake. Here’s how choreographer Cherylyn Lavagnino, who created the piece, describes it: “‘Veiled,’ (2016), a new work for a female cast of seven, explores the idea of preserving physical and internal grace in the face of oppression of any kind. While Martin Bresnick’s ‘Prayers Remain Forever’ inspired the choreography, ‘Reading Lolita in Tehran’ by Azar Nafisi and ‘The Art of Grace’ by Sarah L. Kaufman provided the initial creative research. Our daily process as dancers is centered around a quest for grace of movement and emotion.”

The other great thrill here, of course, is to be linked in this very cool way with Azar Nafisi’s beautiful book “Reading Lolita in Tehran.” Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance premiered the new work in June and reprised it today at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where Lavagnino teaches. Too bad I couldn’t make it!

There’s a piece on it in the Village Voice. And in Broadway World.

Photo credit: Australian dancer Irene Vera Young, from the collection of the State Library of New South Wales.

Practicing Grace Online

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cdtblogpostphotoRecently I had the great pleasure of speaking with Brian Wesolowski of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit that works to preserve Internet openness and freedom of expression. He’d read “The Art of Grace” and wanted to interview me on how to bring grace into our plugged-in lives online. A fantastic CDT Tech Talk podcast resulted; click here to listen.

Brian also wrote a terrific post expanding on what we spoke about to include more ways to bring grace into the digital age. Here’s an excerpt:

“How many times a day do you check your email or messaging apps? How often do you try to cram in a call while you are walking somewhere? Does your calendar have you booked in 15-minute increments? These are all byproducts of technology supposedly making our lives easier and more efficient, but has also made our lives more stressful and complex.

“So how can we slow down in our increasingly digital world and still embrace the technology so many of us love?”

What follows are Brian’s smart and thoughtful ways to bring ease into our tech activities, like this one: Lose the headphones on your commute. (I love this advice…walking around outside with my headphones on definitely makes me feel disconnected and weirdly vulnerable.)

What are your tips on better online living?

Photo: 1911 stenographer, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Cary Grant & Bobby Kennedy: Two Gentlemen of the Junkyard

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Cary Grant and Robert F. Kennedy. © 1963, Bob Burchette/The Washington Post. Used with permission
Cary Grant and Robert F. Kennedy. ©1963, Bob Burchette/The Washington Post. Used with permission

A beautiful spread in the British Harper’s Bazaar about THE ART OF GRACE is very dear to me, and not only for its wonderfully kind descriptions (“delightful,” “elegant,” “always with a light touch…” oh, I could go on!). The writer, Literary Editor Erica Wagner, also takes note of one of the photos in the book, and she highlights its meaning.

It happens to be one of my favorite photos of the book, depicting the actor Cary Grant and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy standing together in an impound lot. In her review, Wagner notes Grant’s “considerate charm and physical carriage,” and also this extra dimension of his caring nature: “Sure, we’re used to seeing him staring into Katharine Hepburn’s eyes in ‘The Philadelphia Story’–but perhaps the image of him standing in a junkyard with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1963, as the two men consider what turning it into a playground might do for the children of Washington, DC, is less familiar.”

I found the photo in question hidden in the archives at The Washington Post, unseen for decades, its edges curling, and my heart gave a little leap, for it perfectly illustrates an altogether different, off-screen view of Grant. It underscores why the debonair actor is a guiding spirit in my book.

The Harper’s review (please click on it to enlarge):

The Art of Grace, Harper's Bazaar, December 2015

You Got One More Gear

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I fixed my eye on the kid up the road. He was my son, a recent high-school grad and competitive cyclist, and he was waiting for me with a big smile as I churned toward him on a mountain bike in North Carolina’s Pisgah Forest.

“Hey Mom, you got one more gear,” he said in surprise as I arrived. I looked down at my chain ring and saw he was right: I could have shifted into easier pedaling. But though the climb was steep I hadn’t felt I needed it–I’d been so focused on that smile of his, a magnet of encouragement.

We continued riding, side by side, but darn if the mountain wasn’t growing, rising up around every turn bigger and beastlier than before. Now I was absolutely in my easiest gear, but it wasn’t enough. I had to stop.

“C’mon, Mom!” my son called back to me, his grin a bright spot of light in the forest shade. “Drink some water, Mom! Get back on, Mom; you got this!”

Uh, really? I thought. But his perkiness and the sparkle in his eye moved me back onto the saddle. And when I started pedaling again I had that feeling from before, like I had one more gear–even though I didn’t. Somehow I felt I had a little reserve in the tank; I wasn’t yet running on empty. I had just enough to keep going.

Encouragement, inspiration, awe: These are all powerful forces. Curiously, they’re rarely studied by scientists and academics. They’re difficult to document with data points. But we know them when we feel them.  They ease and lubricate our efforts, they get us through hard times. Any athlete or weekend 5K-er knows that cheering from the sidelines helps fire up the will. In any setting, joyfully given support (joyful is the operative word!) can offer a lift. And along with the wave of optimism blowing your way, you might feel a little awe at yourself, too. How’d I manage to motor on? That’s a pretty nice gift.

Awe can arise from a moment of human lovingkindness just as it can from nature, beauty or a religious context. An interesting New York University study –a rare one to address this topic–shows that experiencing awe can make us happier, less stressed, even more creative. To which I’ll add: especially when you stumble upon awe in a surprising place, like when a thigh-burning test in the woods is sweetened by a bright-eyed teen.

Those with the kindness and compassion to inspire awe are truly graceful. They transform a tough time into a moment of grace. They are that one more gear, which eases our efforts and gives us elegance when we least expect it. 

Perhaps you’ve had an experience like this. Who’s your “one more gear”?

Leap Into Grace

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exercising on the beach

Here’s what I believe about grace:

Grace is part of the human condition. Let’s own it.

Grace, as poets and philosophers have pointed out for centuries, is part of beauty. Some feel it’s more important than beauty. “Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. When we think of beauty, we tend to focus on static qualities of appearance. Grace, however, is beauty in action, whether we’re talking about grace as a spiritual quality, as welcoming behavior, or as a smooth and harmonious way of moving.

Graceful movement is perhaps the most underrated of the three types of grace; religious grace or “the social graces” may spring to mind first. But think about movement for a moment. How does it happen? There is so much mystery to movement, which is part of its enchantment. No one really understands how we move, how we manage to get all our parts organized to brush our teeth or take out the trash or play tennis without thinking much about each moment. The mechanisms by which our brains orchestrate movement and get our bodies out into the world–which is at the very core of our evolutionary mandate–remain obscure. They’re simply too complicated to study with the available brain-scanning technology. Talk to neuroscientists and you’ll hear how awestruck they are by the secret choreography of our 100 billion brain cells, all working together to produce coordinated motion.

Here’s one of my favorite TED talks, by neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert, a self-described “movement chauvinist.” He’s funny and wise, and addresses this very subject. His talk is called “The Real Reason for Brains.”

Robots can beat us at chess but they cannot approach the ease of ordinary human motion. Breaking down the miracle of movement is beyond the reach of science, but there is not much mystery to how we can become even better, more graceful movers. It’s pretty simple: Practice. “Grace is the growth of habit,” wrote eighteenth-century French moralist Joseph Joubert. “This charming quality requires practice if it is to become lasting.”

Grace is an habitual practice, which involves and enhances the whole person. Getting up and moving is the only way we’ll move better, and more gracefully. Personally, I think it’s more appealing to view moving as a route to being graceful, rather than as a chore to labor through in order to burn calories or get fit.

It’s important to find a physical activity you truly love. For me, it’s swimming; I’m in the pool every weekday morning. And every morning it feels like a miracle. I never learned to swim as a kid, so some years ago I signed up for a swim class for adults. I expected to be the only awkward mom amid a bunch of teenagers–but the class was full of other folks just like me. I’ll never forget the first time I swam a full length, emerging to clutch the wall in the deep end, gasping and amazed.

That’s pretty much how I feel after every swim, decades later: awash in wonder. The flopping-around, sinking, sputtering little girl in me cannot believe I can get back and forth across the pool. 

That bone-deep, full-body, physical deliciousness can come from anywhere: from a long walk through your neighborhood, a run, a bike ride, a hike. The joy of moving is unlike anything else, don’t you find? Health-wise, we tend to place a lot of emphasis on eating right and going organic and cutting out carbs and junk–and those are all important. But getting out in the world and simply moving? That’s the best thing you can do for yourself. As Daniel Wolpert says, We have a brain so we can move. And moving is crucial for our brains. Numerous studies show walking helps you think, and that it may help slow the progress of Alzheimer’s. Students do better on exams after 20 minutes of exercise. 

Moving does all that, and enhances our gracefulness too. Walking to the post office or the library, taking the stairs, enjoying a good, long stroll at lunch–there are so many ways to move with increasing ease and grace through your day.

Moving feels good for a reason: We are meant to do it. We are meant to do it so much that we become expert–and graceful-movers. Our brains and our bodies are designed for grace.

How about you? Do you have a favorite way to put movement into your day?

photo credit: “Exercising on the Beach” via http://photopin.com