chain link reaction

Recently I heard a story about a building that was being demolished. A group of men were hired to do the job. An observer asked the man in charge if these men were highly skilled men. The answer was that they were common laborers. If you want to build, he explained, you want experts. But anyone can be a wrecker. What can take weeks, months, years to build can be destroyed in a few seconds. The author used this story to illustrate a point: we can choose to be builders or wreckers in our lives.

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Saturday night presented a text from my brother Kurt announcing that he was in the area and could he stop by? Of course he could and how gentlemanly of him to ask beforehand to allow us time to give our dwelling a once-over to make it a bit more company friendly [alas, he knows us well.] That's generosity for you, Mrs. Bennett would say. As he walked through the door and his congeniality commenced, I was forced to brush aside a fistful of things that had been eroding me that day. He built tall tall towers with Janie. He joined us for a dinner of chicken and rice soup and homemade crazy bread [I take that as a compliment...the boy loves his JBCs.] He helped me with the dishes. We talked. Actually, I think it was mostly that I blabbered and he listened. He left a few hours later, token red cream soda in hand. Apparently he also took my day's frustrations, because after he left I couldn't seem to find them.

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Lately Janie's favorite playtime activity is building what we in the business call "tall tall towers." Using cardboard blocks we assemble a structure and top it off with a bucket. One by one, she hands us things to place in the bucket. We see how full we can get the bucket before the whole thing topples. [Those cardboard blocks can hold their own in today's battery-powered toy race, tell you what.] And when a tower does fall, distress only remains on her face for a few moments before she eagerly begins to make her sign for more/again. Again. Again. Build again. When things fall down, build it again.

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Tonight I read these words about the psychological effects on the Chilean miners who have been trapped underground for ten weeks.

The [miners] who will do the best [mentally] will be those that served others within the group. There are givers and takers in life and those that give tend to do mentally better in life. . . . It’s like the Savior taught. You lose yourself in service for others, and in essence, you forget yourself.”

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This little trail of crumbs has led me to ponder this: Bad stuff happens. Things fall down. Build again. Give. Give again. Build by giving, give by building. You may or may not always find that you lose your woes, but you might just find you helped someone else misplace theirs. Maybe you will right something someone else knocked down.
Or, maybe, you will just right something in yourself a little.

quote taken from Dr. Elia Gourgouris, found here

story from one of this guy's talks