city of dreams

Friday night Paris was attacked… a city that many love as much as I love New York… it was shocking… and yet I wonder why I still am shocked when these things happen…  as it is happening in other cities all the time and the news is filled with these stories constantly…  it does bring a feeling of futility and frustration that our world is broken and bleeding… I watch with my son in a hotel room the news coverage and politicians saying what should be done to fix the situation…  and my 13 year old says… ‘I don’t think they’re going to fix this situation’…

and I’m drawn to look back at day four in New York when the farmer and I woke up to rain… when you wake up in the rain, every human beings first response is to want to stay in bed…  I haven’t polled every human being but this urge is in me so strongly I can only imagine I am correct in assuming everyone wants to stay put in bed…

waking up with a farmer to rain is unlike waking up with anyone else to rain… because for farmers rain means money…  the properly timed rain is the difference between a bumper crop or not… and thus the saying ‘million dollar rain’…

so unlike others who romanticize rain…  for the farmer it is much more… which made it fun to experience it in New York with him… where it can’t make him money… or lose him money…

 

rainy day in New York and for us it was spent sneaker shopping at Flight Club… walking through Washington Square Park… walking through SoHo and looking in windows at art… wishing I could buy art…

this is what makes me so sad about Paris…  like New York, these are cities that are attacked because they mean so much to everyone…  even farmers from Saskatchewan, Canada…

I’ve dreamt of visiting Paris with the farmer someday… dreamt of a rainy day in Paris and knew it would be even more romantic than a rainy day in New York…

 

we stopped by our hotel… put on dry clothes and headed to the Blue Haven to have a bite to eat while watching the Mets play in the World Series…

while eating we watched out the window at people bustling by…  some with their dogs, some lost tourists, some so comfortable with where they were going you knew they had lived here a long time…

and my thoughts drift this morning to how a human being could kill another…  the only conclusions I could dream up in my head this weekend were…  desperation, poverty, power and a sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself…

raising children in this world is a frightening thing…  I see God and truth and light in everything… and I also see a pure evil out there as well…  and I want to protect my kids from the evil and keep them close to God…

and yet I would love for them to experience living in a large city…  I wish I had the chance when I was younger… the farmer and I have decided someday when we are old we will live in different cities for a month at a time every year…  and my hope is our world is still open enough and friendly enough for us to be able to experience living in other places…

as we wandered we came across a parking garage where cars are on top of each other…  I realize to most this is not a big deal but to us farmers it is odd…

city of dreams…  this morning sitting in my farmhouse, having coffee and pondering the fight in the world of good vs evil…  I choose to believe that good wins every time… not just because I’ve watched a lot of Disney movies growing up… but because it is the only way to believe without losing your mind or happiness…  I choose to believe that God is here, with me, in me and everywhere… and where ever there is evil, God is also there and will triumph over it…