Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

— Anne Lamott in Traveling Mercies

The decade 2010 was heralded by what's often referred to as a blue moon, when a second full moon occurs in December, the month of the winter solstice. In the evening's lunar omnipresence and with the crowd's eyes looking up to the fireworks and the sky, the countdown to midnight felt more like  a countdown to a NASA blast off, launching us into a new decade of discovery - destination unknown.

For a little while the moon made me feel in unison with the world. We were all looking up. Well, maybe not all of us.

I thought of a documentary I'd seen on ARTE that showed how the visuals of the first US moon landing were shot in a Stanley Kubrick film set in London, apparently while he was shooting '2001:A Space Odyssey'. The verbal communications from space (scripted!) were integrated into the visuals which I imagine isn't too tough when the speaker's face is engulfed in a space helmut. I thought of how nuclear waste is being launched into outer space and how pissed off I'd be if I were an alien. While the full moon may not effect others in the same stream of consciousness manner, I, like most, wax optimistic at the onset of a new year. Maybe even more so for a new decade - the friends, the fanfare, the hope, the curiosity, the renewed commitment to what “could be.” Before the champagne has gone flat, we have already begun our individual odysseys, even if only in spirit.

It took me about a week to awaken from my cryonic state of bliss. Orbiting around me: escalating war, religious/racial hatred, political corruption..the list is endless and getting 'endlesser.' Plus the planet is shrinking. Not really, but it feels like it. I remembered the super computer HAL's confession at the end of  '2001' : “I'm scared, Dave...I can feel it slipping away.”  Then his memory banks are erased. “One could envy him,” I thought; then Haiti cracked open.

The French idiom for “thanks to” is “grâce à.” While the eyes of the world were fixed to images in the press and TV, out of the horror, came grace. Global grace. Spiritual writer Brian Doyle extols that  “Grace is utterly free, ferociously strong, and about as mysterious a thing as you could imagine...We think of grace arriving like an ambulance, just-in-time, an invisible divine cavalry cresting a hill of troubles, but maybe it lives in us and is activated by illness of the spirit. Maybe we're loaded with grace. Maybe we're stuffed with the stuff. Maybe it's stitched into our DNA.”

All I could see was the illness. It took an “otherworldly” disaster for me to see the grace. 'Spirituality' is still on my 2010 'To Do' list and I'm more interested in mythology than religion, so I next turned to the Greeks. The three daughters of Zeus and the nymph Eurynome are the sister goddesses of beauty - Aglaia (Splendor), Euphrosyne (Mirth), and Thalia (Good). Known as the Three Charities and then later as the Three Graces, they were originally worshipped as three aniconic stones. Scholars believe that an astrological phenomenon such as a series of meteorites, was probably interpreted by The Graces first worshippers as a sign of the goddesses decent from heaven.

Cast into the form of three maidens by the 5th century B.C., they inspired multiple cults in Ancient Greek society, and were often paired with the cult of Demos, “serving the needs of Athenians themselves for democracy, peace, and food.”  The Graces are treated as a trinity rather than as individuals. A triple embodiment of compassion and benevolence, they reflect the three aspects of the gift: giving, accepting, and returning.

But it's not all charity work and protocol. They preside over banquets and social events, hang out with the divinities of love, Aphrodite and Eros, jam with the Muses, and dance without abandon. They are celestial rockstars, goddess superstars and human activists. They are Angelina Jolie, on a good day. Times three. Except for the designer gowns. Whether portrayed as svelt teens in transparent gowns or uninhibited nudists in desperate need of liposuction; they are always scantily dressed, if dressed at all. Grace should be without disguise or pretense.

The Perigee Moon, the biggest and brightest moon of 2010, will be in the sky tonight. It's 14% wider and 30% brighter than any other full moon this year. Mars is having a 'close encounter' with Earth as well. According to www.Spaceweather.com (Jan 29), Mars will have an 'all night conjunction' with our moon. I tried that one night, but I just couldn't do it. Maybe I'll join a couple of girlfriends in a naked dance around a eucalyptus tree, instead.  The decade is looking up. Well, maybe not all of it.