a blistered hand on the handle of a shovel

Ah! My kids are filthy - unplugged and tuned in to the sweetness and unlimited adventurousness of their own imaginations.  As they say in the addictive cyber world of Facebook, I "like this." If you pass our front sidewalk but stop short of crossing the street, you'll find an idyllic  patch of grass and dirt where sits, not an electrical outlet for recharging iPhones in order to receive second-to-second updates on all the banality, lurid gossip and delirium within society at large, but a land of dinosaurs and mud pools and dandelion trees. You'll find the touchable, kissable, flesh and blood components of a smaller existence, one more rhythmic than jolting. 

It isn't a hide under a rock and plug up our ears, blindfold our eyes, brand of being I want for my family (I am so thankful for the sense of connection to far away friends and the opportunity for developing new ones that the internet has provided me), but one of balance. I want our greater reality, the reality that fills our minds, our souls, even, to be made up of school lessons, face-to-face conversations, shared meals and our communal reception of the Eucharist on Sunday mornings. 

There is a time to surf and a time to shut down - to walk away from what is lifeless and distant, from that fiery urge to know everything NOW. There is satisfaction, whole and solid, on the other side of withdrawal from the steady stream of technological stimulation. There are fairies to house and feed, I've been told by my daughter Priscilla, in our yard wet with dew, teeming with tales mysterious and miraculous of re-birth, new growth, unmanufactured beauty. There is much to do today, much worth striving for! Let's get started! 

Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.

-T.S. Eliot