one bike

I've just been sitting outside on this beautiful sunny peaceful day.  It's just an awesome feeling just sitting there listening, looking at a front lawn, that needs mowing again, imagining family lolling about, a tent here, a tent there.  Hearing children giggling and laughing as they walk up the road, and finally into view, with towels hung over their arms.  And there is just this inner delight at watching them.  So unbothered by all the material desires that await them.  So unbothered by what they are wearing, unbothered by their straggly damp hair, unbothered that only one has a bike to ride on and that the rest of them have to walk.  Just so unbothered.  Just simply receiving.  And going with it.  Receiving the joy of a lake to swim in, on this warm spring day.  Receiving the simple task of walking down the road to the water.  And I remember days like that.  Days lying underneath a grapevine and just eating grapes.  Climbing plum trees, and gorging myself on plums.  Playing hide and seek.  And I am so glad to see days like this still exist.  That there are children who have little enough, that they will just receive the goodness of a nice spring day, a beautiful lake, a few friends, a couple of towels, and one bike.  

And I don't know, but I think that's what it's really all about, sometimes.  That crazy manic desire to get back to those days.  That crazy manic drive that continually gnaws away out us, that we need more, we need more, we need more, or we're never going to make it back there.  We're never going to make it back if we don't hurry up and get enough stuff.

And the whole while, we are run ragged, we are stressed and chaotic.  We are screaming at our children to hurry up.  We are screaming at each other to move out of the way.  We are yelling at others to catch up.  We are crying folks down, we are splitting hairs, we are frantically creating and selling more of what we don't need, to help others get back to those days - those days of less.

Those days of nothing much to hold, but with the childlike innocence of holding out our little hands and receiving.  And you were meant to say thank you - but sometimes you were just smiling so much that you forgot - and it really didn't matter - not really - because as God would have it - you'd have another day, just like today, tomorrow. 

And if it wasn't.  It wasn't.  And no one got too bothered about it.  You would just end up inside, (if you were allowed) - fighting and arguing about who was going to ride the bike as soon as you could get outside.