Week 6 and 7 – All Things Great and Small

Sometimes life is so big, the weight of it is crushing. I find myself to be the smallest at the ocean. A sea of unknown creatures, and unknown depth. The vastness not visible. On the beach, shells lay battered by the tide. A brave few cling to the shore with their last moments of life, fully intact. My little people comb through the sand and try to make sense of centuries of birth and death. They pluck up shells and stars and find a dead jellyfish. And they are so small that is crushes me like the sea.

And Clair De Lune. If someone pecked that tune out for me on a beach under the starry night, all of life might make sense. But Paris. And Beirut. And Kenya. Like the shells on the shore, the boys pick out the bits and pieces they understand. We are removed from the enormity of the crises happening, but the news filters to us on the road. We answer question after question trying to glean some understanding ourselves. They make me wish that life could be boiled down into the simple understanding they have of love and peace and kindness.

As we explore our corner of the world, it’s interesting to see how parts affect the whole. How change can start with one little step, one little voice, one little person. I love to see them picking at pieces as they search for answers about greater things. We will spend our last few days in the south exploring more about civil rights. Connecting current events and history sometimes creates a tangled storyline that is full of complexities and simplicity at the same time. I find it fascinating that we can do something big and abstract like sending humans into outer space, but we haven’t yet mastered how to relate to the humans on earth.

This post was originally published on the travel blog Rambling on a Rural Road.