Close your eyes and envision an animal, a person, a machine that has mastered and woven both the metal of power and the softness of grace together in a single mantle . What comes to mind? Is it the rescue dog nimbly picking his way, using his powerfully keen nose to find the desperate and dying in the rubble of a fallen building ? Is it a cardiac surgeon creating baffles in a walnut sized newborn heart so that it might beat with life on its own? Perhaps it is a computer program that has the power and precision to provide us with complicated and useful information in the blink of an eye. All of these are powerfully graceful operations that we might take for granted. And what about our words?

Can our words be powerfully graceful? Can we say what we mean, mean what we say, and allow grace to guide us? In the times we are living can we mingle these two strengths to grant others the benefit of the doubt when we cannot truly know their intention but can only guess? Powerfully graceful words are words like, “You go ahead, I’m not in a hurry” “Forgive me please,” “I accept your apology,” or “I don’t know your story and will choose to believe your intentions were good.” The powerfully graceful individual who can empathize and even choose no words at all but offer only a smile or a turn of the cheek to the unaware and unconscious makes the space we all need to move forward.

In choosing a mantra this month the image and concept of powerfully graceful decisions, words, and actions led me to thinking considerably about where this could take me. Practicing powerful grace is challenging, and demands a level of consciousness that forces me to let go of annoyances, petty irritations, and distractions and home in on tenderness and strength. Human beings everywhere right now need the extra space and thoughtfulness from one another and concentrating my efforts to be powerfully graceful is helping me to do my part.

What mantra takes you through your day?