Day 11 :: Pics of The Town I Live In

This is a trail that links Galbraith to Padden in Bellingham.  

We attended Dirt Church on this trail today. 

(first we had our usual Sunday fhe lesson in pajamas)

Mushrooms on a log.

Avery on a log. 

This tree recently "exploded" in a wind storm. Crazy!

Evan dragged this "broom" through the whole trail. He would stop and sweep once in a while.

This Douglas Fir and Cedar Pine were wrapped around each other. 

These two trees are the giants that you find in all of the forests around here.  

Yesterday the phone rang. It was a robo-message informing us that school will be cancelled until April 24th. 

I was home alone in the empty kitchen, and I started sobbing. I cried loud and ugly because no one was around. It echoed all over the kitchen counter. 

I've been trying to figure out why I am so sad about this. 

There is the obvious, but what else? There are so many terrible things in the world...THIS isn't THAT terrible, and yet I feel so sad. 

First of all, my kids' teachers are the best of the best. I love them all so dearly. More important: my kids love them. They are having the best year - best classmates, so much learning. 

There's this C. S. Lewis quote circulating, I'm sure you've seen it. Lisa read it out loud the other day and it helped me realize why social distancing makes me so sad: 

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

The thing that bothers me is that we can't go about our lives as normal while this threat exists. I can maintain all the optimism and calm as long as normalcy remains - church, soccer, school. But when you take the "community" out of my life...things become bleak. Huddling together like frightened sheep makes me feel just like that: a frightened sheep. 

Every Sunday this funny old guy in our ward, Ray Wilkett, comes up and shakes my hand super hard like he's going to break my bones, and he talks to me about the temple or about the Old Testament (neither of which I am a scholar at). 

Last week he was telling me about the symbolism of human touch in the progression that plays out in a temple session. We start out without physical bodies, and there is no touching. Then we enter the lone and dreary world, and the apostles touch Adam and Eve. Touch becomes an important part of the ceremony after that. Human contact is essential to being here on this Earth. 

I had never thought of that...and it was interesting. And then days later, we are instructed to limit our physical contact. We have been given actual numbers as to the feet we need to keep our distance. We look at strangers and fear getting too close. Everyone is a threat. Community is a threat. And that bothers me so much. It bothers me on a spiritual level. 

(I wrote this a few days ago when everything felt scary and raw. I have since made peace with it all and am ready to start "home school" tomorrow. It will be a very loose version of real home school. My kids seem excited. To be continued...)

5 years ago