The Little Things

My head has been swimming with dozens of topics on which I might offer my own, rambling ponderances. Taking the much needed break from my blog (there was really little choice in the matter, actually, as the responsibilities of teaching simply overwhelmed all extra-curricular writing) was a good thing, but it is as if someone threw a lever and called a halt to the conveyer belt in the factory of my mind. The system is on hold but the ideas keep spilling out, piling up like the chocolate in that old episode of I Love Lucy. These ideas are often impossible to cram back down.

However, despite the large number of pseudo-ideas and points of discussion festering in my brain, I have decided that this first return to blogging normalcy should not leap for the deep end. Doing so may be even a bit presumptuous. Perhaps I need to earn that responsibility back; it has been over two months since I dove for those waters. So, instead, I offer a short ode to life that feels the equivalent of taking off your shoes and your socks, rolling up those jeans that hang a few inches too low, and wading into the shallows. And even in doing so, there still remains something sacramental in the air, the smell of baptism…

I am thankful for the little things. It is a grace to even recognize the little things when our default setting is to look beyond them and concern ourselves with only the big things, the giants in the land with which we must contend from day to day. But like pausing to stay the night at a wayside inn instead of pushing on through to Boston (thank you, Henry Longfellow, for reminding us of little things with big meanings), opening our eyes to the little things is a habit I desperately want to form in my life. The giant things demand so much of our time, but they often cast smaller shadows than we expect, while the significance of the little things … oh, their shadows stretch larger and longer than we often realize.

And so, I am thankful for the little things – the little graces.

I am thankful for that first draught of a Guinness at an outdoor cafe beneath the evening sun in Lorrach.

I am thankful for the absurdity of spaghetti eis, which holds not only the power of a wonderful sugar rush, but also the magic that can make me feel like a child again.

I am thankful for the wagging of dog tails as they lope up and down the grassy stretches between the fields of growing corn, and the way they leap into creeks to cool off after a long hike.

I am thankful for soccer balls and students that use them well.

 

And I am thankful for the nurses who take care of those students when they fall …

…even when those nurses fall asleep.

I am thankful for good books like these…

and, yes, these too… 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am thankful for relaxing picnics with new friends…

and for new barbeque grills…

and vineyards…

and my wonderful wife.

And I am thankful for all the wonderful people who make it possible for us to live in a place that is certainly not devoid of the little things.

And so, the question falls as questions are apt to do: for what little things are you thankful?