The Secret of Gravity

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS DIED in the Southeast Asia Tsunami.

Pissed off trying to merge onto the 405 Freeway.

Seniors must choose between medicine and food.

Tivo is not recording the new season of American Idol.

Children in the Middle East duck bullets on the way to school.

Clients are asking for more revisions to their corporate brochure.

Genocide in Sudan, anti-Semitism in Europe, political oppression in North Korea, religious fundamentalism in Iran.

Late for soccer practice in Orange County, lost the big deal in Dallas, couldn’t get tickets for the play in New York, no room at the resort in Hawaii.

IT’S HARD TO CARE about the mundane when there is so much severity. Problems we think are important become inconsequential, embarrassing. We feel ashamed; perhaps we should.

But we also need the simple – the routine, everyday problems that fill our lives. For in the mundane there is gravity, there is weight that keeps us sane, that keeps us from spinning out of control.

The gravity of the mundane lifts us up. It gives us balance and perspective. It allows us to live while surrounded by sadness and chaos.

It is the mundane that makes faith possible, that brings us closer to higher powers. We can choose to let common problems bring us down, or we can decide to embrace them and let them give us perspective. And as we grow, so does the world.

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS DIED in the Southeast Asia Tsunami.

My daughter and her friends are collecting change for disaster relief.

Gravity rises.