La Sagrada Família

Lately my mind has been more like a booby trap than a steel trap, so helping the girls with their academics has been challenging.  This week we experimented with oxygenated water, which, among other things, has been touted as improving one’s oxygen levels when consumed.  We searched every store for it until I realized that I had incorrectly translated the word and that we had just been missing it.  In case you are interested, the effect it has on raw food is worthy of close investigation, but drinking it just makes for an expensive burp.  

If you go to Barcelona, don’t miss seeing La Sagrada Família, Antonio Gaudí’s truly magnificent basilica that has been under construction for 133 years and is still not done. Gaudi made the church his life’s work, and it is his vision that is still being carried out today almost 90 years after his death. The architecture itself represents the birth, life, and death of Christ, and the interior reflects nature with a forest of tall columns bathed in color from the stained glass windows.  It was stunning, and millions have come to stand in awe.

While there, I was reminded of another craftsman named Huram who carved 200 pomegranates by hand for the tops of the spires of the temple in Jerusalem.  It must have taken many years and he most likely devoted much of his life to this work.  But once erected, the spires stood so tall that I doubt anyone from the ground could see the fruits of his labor.  He worked for an audience of one.

Wrinkled is not what I wanted to be when I grew up, but neither was old, and they both seem to be happening.  I ask my girls what they want to be when they grow up because I am still looking for ideas.  While I have become great at redecorating my comfort zone, which is currently a lovely shade of safe, I can’t point to any one big endeavor to which I’ve devoted my life. As noble as my efforts are of not mixing plaids in public or burping the alphabet may be, I sense there might be more to life. I could be a chemist. I could be an interior decorator. Maybe, I could carve a pomegranate.

La Sagrada Família is a work in progress, and so am I. I don’t know if anyone will ever stand in awe of what I do.  I don’t know if anyone will be able to stand what I do.  Dang, it is unlikely that anyone will even know what I do. Regardless, there is something I am supposed to be doing, and I don’t want to miss it. My audience is waiting.