It's been a day.
I felt the need to be outside a LOT today. So Matthew and I took the dog for a walk, and then we came back and I stayed outside. It was bright and sunny, but cold as can be. One of my very favorite kinds of days. Where the air is crisp, but you're glad to have your warm coat and comfy hat to make it bearable to be out there, witnessing God's beauty and enjoying Mother Nature's blessings.
I began breaking up the long sticks that I had placed into a huge pile weeks and weeks earlier. I had music playing on my phone as I broke up the sticks so that they could fit better into my Yard Waste bin and so that recycling would actually take it.
As I broke, stepped on, snapped in half, and (sometimes) cut with clippers these long, dead, thorny branches long ago sapped of life, I realized that I was beginning to enjoy myself. It was good to do something so physical with my hands that didn't involve the tap-tapping of my fingers on the keyboard or the clicking of my mouse. It felt good to be physically active and to be breaking these branches, these thorns that made me wear gardening gloves in order to protect my skin from scratches. It felt so cathartic to be reaching in and smooshing down all those branches. It felt great when I stepped inside the bin and firmly jumped on all those dead branches and thorns. It was a fully immersive experience in nothing but the present moment--and, these days, I've not been there much (the present).
I've spent my days glued to the TV screen and the computer monitor and my phone, reading news article after news article that carefully picks apart what happened.
I've spent my days transporting myself back to that awful day, a few days ago, on Wednesday, January 6, the day that rioters and insurrectionists (domestic terrorists)--bent on destroying our democracy and hurting, even murdering, people--descended upon our "bright shining city on the hill" and lawlessly and violently defaced the Capitol building that is our country's cherished treasure, a place that is the physical face and activity center of the very democracy that these terrorists tried unsuccessfully to destroy.
I began to think about the thorns and the sticks and the dead things I was breaking up. I likened the thorns to those crazy people who stormed our Capitol. I likened the dead branches to their cold, lifeless hearts who didn't care WHO they hurt as long as they got their message across.
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