Reflection

I am spending the weekend with my grandmother, Mama Ann.

Her home is the quietest place I know of in the entire world. It was intentionally designed that way--as a retreat for my grandparents when they fled city life in the 80's, and as a retreat for us when Dad died and Mom worked nights and weekends in addition to teaching. Now it serves as a retreat home for their pastor friends who need to get away to an "unplugged" place for a bit. The church is so remote, it shares a pastor with another town and they only have services twice a month. I can't get calls here. Just texts. It sits on 50+ acres in the flat expanse that is western Kentucky, bordered by a cemetery on one side and the declining home of a long-dead aunt on the other. This is the view from where I write now:


I've just walked 5 miles, drunk a cup of herb tea, and had quiet time on the deck. Together with time to write, this is shaping up to be a real treat.

I was thinking about perspective while I walked. The land is SO flat here. Boring, even, when it's not spring--and its usually not. The little road i walk runs between two massive, identical farmhouses that sit over a mile apart. They were built for a father and his son in the 1800s. The father must have been so incredibly proud to gift his son and young wife with such an incredible home, identical in grandeur to his own. The farm was divided, and the men could've lived out their lives within view of each other and sharing in the work of the farm while still maintaining a little privacy. Maybe they did. I don't know. Today, though, the father's home lies in ruin. There's a land dispute, and the home can't be sold until it's resolved. Meanwhile, the roof sags and the elements invade. So do I, sometimes. There are still canned vegetables neatly lining the pantry, and half-knitted afghans sitting near heaps of store-bought yarn. Newspaper clippings, tax returns, receipts for cattle transactions...Unfinished. Unclaimed. To be bull-dozed, maybe, or shoveled into one of those big industrial dumpsters one day when the home finally changes hands. Stored up vestiges of what was once a successful life.

The son's house has fared better, bought by a local nurse for $20,000 a few years ago, then taken to the studs and rebuilt to the original specs. It's beautiful, and well-tended, and a lush garden already shows signs of return.... And that son is no more here to enjoy it than his dad is to lament his own home's shape. They're gone. The homes don't matter to either of them, now.

I'm thinking about things I'd like to give my daughter that she will use in life. A well-trained mind, piano lessons, discipline, a college fund, loving support, a sense of reverence and gratitude... But in a few years, none of that will matter. If we haven't attended to and cultivated the heart, the rest won't continually spring up and fulfill from generation to generation. It's just extra "stuff.".

I told her she's unplugged this week, too. She didn't gripe, but gave me that look that let's me know what she thinks of my boring ideas for her. I think I'll take her to see the two houses and show her why I'm more interested in her relationships than her stuff. Maybe she'll remember that someday when it matters.