By Ellyarne Donovan
Australian journalist and author Julia Baird sat down with fellow journalist Jacqueline Maley to speak on her latest book ‘Bright Shining: How grace changes everything’ as a part of the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival.
The book analyses “grace” in relation to human experience.
When thinking about the concept of grace, my mind immediately goes to the Christian value. A holy and sacred act gifted by God to people. A spontaneous gift free of expectation and stereotype.
While grace is set at the basis of Christian faith, it’s not something we actively notice in the public realm – as noted by Baird at the beginning of her panel. She expresses grace to be small “unhistoric acts” that happen daily and defines them as a form of awe.
It’s about being kind and generous, “loving the unlovable, forgiving the unforgivable…”. Making a moral choice. Thinking about how your actions can affect another on a personal level. What can it mean when someone believes? That they care for someone in an astonishing way?
Interestingly, Baird noted the unrecognized hunger for awe, mentioning a study she came across when researching her book that took place across multiple countries and included thousands of people, searching for the No.1 reason behind this hunger. It was found that kindness, seeing generosity happen, was the reason.
Baird described instances where she was in awe, where those acts of grace were evident in her life experiences. Her mother had a large influence on her understanding of grace.
I noticed the audience were most attentive when she spoke about co-hosting King Charles III’s coronation and the backlash from multiple viewers. Baird revealed that the complaints were 51 per cent editorial while the remaining 49 per cent focused on the fact that Stan Grant, an Aboriginal man, was on TV.
Baird touched on grief and death, and what that tells us about grace, especially as the most moving chapters in her book focus on it. How in such times of crisis “astonishing things can happen”. Those small acts become sacred moments we must hold on to. How they define the way we see people and our own lives.
During the Q&A section, she acknowledged that forgiveness as a part of grace is not easy. To not assume there is a thing such as perfect forgiveness and think of it rather as a way of living. Recognise we are flawed and understand the concept of intentions v actions.
Featured image: Julia Baird at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Photo: Jamie Williams/SWF
