Welcome Post Rerun

Posted by Terry and Leona

Since we have many readers who have joined us and are most likely NOT going to read everything we've written, starting more than year ago, we like to periodically repost our welcome post. We consider it one of our best and want to be sure that we are following our original statement of intent!

Simone Weil was one of last century’s most interesting, albeit controversial, philosophers and thinkers. She coined the phrase “grace and gravity” when describing life. In fact, a posthumous publication of her writings was entitled “Gravity and Grace." She wrote that two forces prevail in the world, light and gravity. Gravity reflects our humanness; light reflects God’s grace.

Those two words, grace and gravity, describe for us the struggle we have between counting the joys of a life long lived and blessed, and the realities or gravity of considering life’s meaning and significance, the end of life, and the realities of eternity.

Weil wrote, “All the natural acts of the soul are controlled by laws similar to Gravity. The only exception is grace.”

In our efforts to face the arguably exciting days of our 50’s and 60’s, we have chosen to look at the process through a new set of eyes. We know that we don’t have a choice about aging, but we do have a choice about living. We are choosing to live with eyes wide open. We want to see more clearly all that is going on around us in our families, communities, around the globe and on the living room floor. Life is about the big things and ideas that haunt us – like social justice, poverty, and the price of real estate. It’s also about washing mud off our grandson’s hands and sitting very still to hear crickets squeak. We both want to experience the grace of aging with joyful, delirious abandon. But we both understand that there exists an irresistible pull of gravity – not the force that causes our skin to sag, but the realities of the difficult things in life. Like the bone-crushing gravity of the death of a friend or a newly diagnosed disease. We want to absorb it all, process it through our life experience, profession and perspective, and then write it down. Seeing our feelings in words somehow emblazons the experience on our soul, and pain is redeemed, joy is reclaimed, and life takes on new vibrancy.

Welcome to our journey of grace and gravity.