We've had guests for a couple days - an investor friend of Monte's and his son. As Don and Monte are talking, Micah's been wandering around wondering what to do. We've talked, but I don't entertain kids. I didn't entertain my kids. Sure we read together, made things together, and played games together, but I also often left them on their own to think up their own things to do, and TV and video games was never an option since we didn't have those. We didn't even have neighbor kids as an option to go play with. Micah's been having some fun, but I think it's been very different for him.
Dawson came home, first meeting us at a Thai restaurant for a supper together and then was here yesterday. Some of his friends came yesterday late afternoon to help him go get composted horse manure and shovel it into our back area for me to scatter over all my garden areas putting them to bed for winter (and I've got some bulbs to plant in my new areas for early Spring flowers). As everyone awaited the great supper I was making, Dawson and friends started playing with all the music instruments we've gathered over the years. Phil was trying to play the mandolin - very creatively successful. Dawson pulled out a flute we were given, for Splarah to try. Aaron started providing rhythm by overturning a trash bin. Monte even was trying to play the saw. I hated to tell them supper was ready! Micah saw cool guys totally uninhibited enjoying making music and hanging around the dining table with gay conversation.
The film clip reminds me of the movie "August Rush". I love that movie. An orphan boy with an austere childhood lives with hope that his parents didn't abandon him and will find him. When he escapes the orphanage I sat with pins-and-needles awaiting evil. Only Robin Williams is the character who abuses this boy's innocence and giftedness. I love his first experience of the hustling, bustling big city. He hears and feels rhythmic music in the traffic and horn honking and all. When exposed to a guitar and left alone with it, he explores it in ways no one usually does. I don't want to tell you anything more about the movie.
I don't know if my youngest brother Robby remembers - he's about ten years younger than me - we used to sit out in our front yard together. We'd sit looking at the gravel in our drive and I'd see pretty ones and I actually collected them, putting them in my jewelry box. I'd tell Robby to listen. "Tell me what you hear ...?" We'd sit that way for a long time.
Have you ever taken the time to sit and watch ants? They'll string out in a long line, some of them carrying stuff. Stuff often larger and probably heavier than themselves. How do they do that? On a crowded street there's such variety of people to watch, but do you notice plants growing in cement, rock, and asphalt cracks and stop to wonder? do you notice the variety of birds 'voices'? I've stopped to observe pigeons, wanting to know what their mannerisms and voices are like, since I'm unfamiliar with them.
The key here is taking time to notice. Maybe it would mean closing our eyes to shut out the normal and listen for the new, feel and sense stuff more, like in the film clip. Like 'be still and know that I am God' kind of time. When the disciples wanted to shove off the insignificant children, Jesus took them on his lap and told us to come to him as a child.
There's such an innocent trust in children, an abandonment in their work and play, so there in the moment, and such a sense of wonder - all pieces of worship.
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