Poop Scoopin

We've been fixing fence. Whadya think? Pretty neat job, huh.

Seriously though, isn't life sometimes like this spider web of twine. You just have to make do and use what you have on hand. It is often quite messy, but by the grace of God it works somehow. You just gotta roll up your sleeves, grab the disconnected and broken parts of our lives and tie them together somehow. You do the best with what you have because while life is not perfect, it is wondrous and worth living.

I've been thinking a lot about life lately. Not that I didn't before, but a French movie I recently saw really has dug into my brain and it just won't let me go. I didn't really like this movie and I can't even say I'd recommend it, yet I am changed because of it. It's about the editor of Elle magazine, Jean-Do Bauby, who in 1995 suffered a massive stroke which effectively turned off his brain stem. The only thing he can move is one eye. With that one eye and some help of therapists they devise a system of communication where he is able to tell about his trapped life. The book they co-write is called, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and it is what the movie is based on. The cinematography is amazing and a little disconcerting, because it is filmed from the perspective of Jean-Do. As a viewer you feel the claustrophobia, the panic, the smallness of his world. But what is even more amazing is that you also come to realize through Jean-Do's courage and imagination the wonderful power of the human spirit to find joy in even the most horrendous of situations. So I have been looking at life through eyes refreshed.

I can be a real complainer and bellyacher. I always been that way. I am not proud of it, but it is true nonetheless. Now when my head hurts or the cows get out and I have to mend the fence with a bunch of old twine or there is a huge pile of horse manure for me to clean up, I feel that first twinge of complaint over the imperfections in life and then something else takes over and I give thanks. "Wow, I'm thankful I can feel pain." or "I get to chase cows and smell the musty earth and feel the burn of my muscles as I climb the hill " or "yipee, I get to scoop poop." You know when I think about poop lately, I realize that out of it often grows the best fruit. So get to scoopin.