By Jane Gordon Julien
May 5, 2025
“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” — Anne Lamott
There is a woman who falls out of bed several mornings a week, throws some water on her face and tucks her hair into a bun, hoists a violin on her shoulder and a little stool on her back, and walks to her chosen spot under a footbridge in Central Park, in New York City.
She positions her stool to face passersby, and she begins.
I do not know Brahms, and Beethoven, and Bach, well enough to tell you she is playing Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for Violin – which you would know if you heard it: DaDaDaDAAAAAA – but here is what I do know: that she is taking her gifts, and giving them away to anyone who will listen.
Her open violin case, with dollar bills tossed in helter-skelter, does not display enough money to make her sojourn into the park financially lucrative. Yet there she is, playing her heart out. And making all of ours sing.
I am thinking about her on this drenched, dismal morning, because people like her bring warmth and brightness to our days. Her notes are grace, in the most musical, beautiful way. They waft through the cherry blossoms that drift, blushing, to the gray asphalt of the pathway leading to her magic.
She gives me hope, that grace will prevail. That we will embrace her goodness, and share it with others. And leave a dollar or two so she knows, through the din of all that is happening in our world, that we hear her, and are grateful.
Think about where grace enters your life. Write about that. If you’d like, share those thoughts with me. Yes, share!