saying grace

Grace comes from the latin Gratia, or Gratus, “pleasing.” If you please or are pleased, something graceful is going on, hopefully, on the other end. Perhaps grace is a mirror for good deeds. Maybe you are witnessing grace in someone, but they do not know it- clandestine grace? This is tricky. Some puritanical notion dictates that it’s more worthwhile somehow if it is not celebrated, or even acknowledged. Throw out the religious connotation for the sake of finding grace without prejudice, and it conjures images of dancers, perhaps, and certainly the assumption that with it along comes that scene-stealer, beauty. So quickly the mind wanders to physical grace, and then down the slippery slope to vanity. But there is something about being thankful that goes beyond the dogmatic or the divine.
I think entire communities search for it but end up confused, and just tie hymnal ribbons on various things, in effect removing the grace from the place, or the memory in mind. Grace can be identified, perhaps, where it is absent.