Today was a short day--we lost another hour in passing between Illinois and Indiana. The highlights of the day were looking for white squirrels in Olney, Illinois (we never saw any but we did see our first cardinal) and finding the Inn at Spring Mill State Park, where we are spending the night. We saw the land change from very flat to hilly, figured out that along with corn it is soya beans that are being produced by the mile, and got a taste of French colonial history (they settled in this area).

As an ordinary day went by, I began to think back on our visit with Nancy's sister Janet, in Homedale, Idaho. Some of you have met Janet, and know what an amazing person she is--getting Colin Powell to address her library group in Homedale, personally sponsoring a school in rural Mexico, arranging cowboy and St. Patrick's Sundays at her little local church, etc. She is an unassuming person in a very small town, but is a make-it-happen (vs. watch it happen or I don't know what is happening) person of the first order.

Anyway, when we visited a week ago Janet was taking care of two of her small grandchildren for the morning. With Nancy and me and Benny and Olivia in tow, she drove out to an even smaller town near Homedale. She parked her car and then introduced us to a new game--find something interesting. It is a simple game but occuppied us for much of the morning. All you do is try to find/see the most interesting thing you can, and point it out to the others, and whoever finds that thing that all agree is the most interesting wins, and gets to choose first out of the pastry bag that we had filled at the panaderia in Homedale. A simple game, but all of us, young and old, could play--and did play. And what it did was turn the ordinary into something most interesting... No GameBoy or XBox or whatever, just a small town and eyes that were being taught to look at things in a more careful way...

So--Nancy and I tried that as we traveled along endless stretches of corn and soy beans. (We are avoiding freeways and seeing much more that way.) And today in the ordinary we did see some things that were interesting--like an amature parachute club and a local treat in a deli--and almost some white squirrels.

Lord, give us hearts that care and ears that hear and eyes that see the special and the interesting in the ordinary things--and people--we pass every day.