Gracious Living

Several weeks ago my wife and I took a mini-vacation to the La Crosse area for a weekend bicycle riding.  We like to stay at a farm bed & breakfast about 35 miles north of La Crosse.  The Mississippi is the western border of Trempealeau County and inland is the drift fewer regions filled with coulees and corkscrew county roads.  We biked for about an hour until we gave in to the relentless rain.  After eating lunch in the car we decided to visit a winey our bed and breakfast hosts had suggested. 

There is one handwritten sign on County Road C – “Winery” with an arrow.  We drove on Joe Coulee road for about five miles until another handwritten sign bid us to turn left.  We drove around the bottom of a hill, looked to our right, and there sat the winery at the top of the hill.  The tasting was free and we were told to ask for John.  John turned out to be pouring the samples and explaining the nuances of each wine.  We bought two glasses to enjoy on the porch and a bottle to take home.

John joined us on the porch with a glass of wine and we enjoyed a wonderful hour and a half conversation.  John explained that owning the winery was a lifestyle choice; he was a retired consulting engineer, who wanted a more relaxed environment.  From the winery porch the hills rolled to the south in layers of flush green woods and pockets of water vapor trapped in the coulees, it was bucolic.  John told us about twenty years ago he decided to make his life mission to live graciously.  He then decided to make his business goal for the winery to produce a wine that would enhance the level of gracious living.

John’s lifestyle and life choices served as his definition of gracious living and it struck a chord for me, one of those “ah-ha” moments in life.  After thinking about it for a short time I worried that maybe gracious living was self-indulgent.  I googled the term gracious living and found these definitions:  kindness and warm courtesy; tact and propriety; courteous and indulgent; beauty and graceful; elegance and good taste; benevolent; merciful and compassionate and civil.

Sometimes there are coincidences that are not explainable and meeting John Gill was one for me.  There is a lesson for me our conversation.  I too, want to live graciously.