Word: graceful
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Though unaffiliated with any religious denomination, Talent House calls itself a Christian school, where the day opens with the Lord's Prayer, and grace is spoken before each meal--character-building tools unavailable, of course, to the nation's public schools. But we live now in the bloody backwash of Littleton, Jonesboro and several other schoolhouse horror stories, not to mention the more quotidian indicators of failing character, from widespread cheating to gang activity. Across the country, schools both public and private are turning to programs of character education in hopes of inoculating kids with the values of civility...
...year-old cousin Nathan is a sports fiend. On the basketball court or soccer field, he is a study in gravity-defying grace. He can cite volumes of baseball trivia and knows the rule book by heart. But like any kid his age, he is still learning how to play well with others. Nathan has struggled to accept losses without blaming his teammates or coaches or the officials, and to win without gloating...
...killers gave evil a face, the victims lent theirs to grace. In ever widening circles the story that lingers is the tale of Cassie Bernall, the girl who when asked "Do you believe in God?" was murdered when she said yes. We expect our martyrs to be etched in stained glass, not carrying a backpack and worrying about their weight and their finals. Hers is a mystery story, the tale of a girl lost to bad friends and drugs and witchcraft and all the dark places of teenage rebellion. Even a youth minister who had some experience turning poisoned kids...
Even Baltimore loyalists were struck by the way players like third baseman Omar Linares, who earns about $100 a month, evoked the grace of Joe DiMaggio and other major league greats of the past. The Cubans' joyful hustle offered quite a contrast to the surly indifference of millionaire Orioles like Albert Belle, who was fanned repeatedly by Cuban pitchers. Says Baltimore fan Paul Koehnlein, a 41-year-old electrical engineer: "The Cubans fill every inning with the heart and the attention to fundamentals that U.S. players don't show our kids anymore...
...other times, Mora becomes too engrossed in writing in a folk tradition and falls into the trap of sentimentality and kitsch. "Corn and trees glow in the sunset, grace manifest May our work enrich the earth. Hear our request/This night and at our death, en paz may we rest," she writes in "Saint Isidore the Farmer." Such passages lose the transcendent quality that should mark them as religious poetry. They are too focused on this earth. More often than not, though, Mora manages to find the right balance between religion and reality, between the glory of the next life...