Hola

Sunday, as we were headed back home, the boys wanted to get a Hi-C at McDonald’s. As we got our drinks at the drive-thru, Joseph looked at the Hispanic woman at the register, waved and said, “Hola!” He is learning a little Spanish at school. The woman talked to him a little bit, more than he could understand, so he started counting. She got a big kick out of it, and handed him a toy.

John said, “Where’s mine?” All I could do was mumble something about his paying more attention in Spanish lessons!

As I had hoped, Thursday evening, we got to go down to the creek. We bundled up and headed down. The boys ended up playing their own game along a high steep bank. I kept an eye on them as I went up and down the bank, looking for fossils or interesting rocks. Joseph always gets a rock or two for me to take home and he tells me to take it to church, “because it’s the Rock.”

While we were looking for rocks, leaning down, I saw something under a rock ledge. I pointed it out to the boys, “What do you see?” John piped up, “Clay!” Indeed. We found the biggest streak of it yet, two feet high, 4, maybe 5, feet long. We’ll have enough clay for anything we want to do.

The clay is not great. It breaks apart too easily, still has chunks of the original rock in it. I don’t know much about geology; I read on the internet that clay is feldspar that has been ground down into very small particles. The rock flakes easily. The longer and more severe the erosion by wind and water, the finer the clay.

I often wonder how we’re so blessed. I don’t want anyone to get a false impression, like somehow life is just grand and I’m this perfect dad, doing all these cool things with my boys. The being blessed part is that they love me in spite of who I am. It’s a lesson that has been good for me to learn. At heart I am a pretty selfish person and have spent a lot of my life doing my thing. The boys, though, take you out of that selfish mode. We have each other. It’s not simply a community by choice. It’s harder on them, really; they’re dependent. What does it mean to live together? Can love really grow if we can walk away? The guys in my small group were talking about that. Someone in the group (not me, I promise!) brought up the Amish, and we discussed how the way they live is an intentional choice to stay together, to not be pulled apart by technology. I’ve said before that we need to be “Functionally Amish.” I don’t mean riding buggies and farming with horses. I mean thinking about how we live, to see if it builds togetherness or takes it away. This is a big step for me, because I am a very private and egotistical person. Generally, the more I think about something, the more likely it is that it’s not something I know or “live into;” rather, it’s a place I know I need head to!