I know this blog has been strangely quiet. This may have something to do with our house still in half-unpacked boxes. Or the fact that we’re only 2 weeks away from finished with the homeschool year, or that I’ve just sent out a 4-page newsletter. For whatever reason, in the slivers of free time (actually while I was on the couch with a stomach ache and Kent was cooking dinner last week) I managed to read a most thought-provoking article with the above title.

This quote has been churning around ever since:
“What we have developed is only society, the collectivity, the organization, regimentation, planning, bureaucracy… and anonymous impersonal technology. As for man’s need to be treated not as a machine for production but as a person, to assert his personal identity, and to have genuine relationships with other people… we are incontestably underdeveloped, not even developing, but regressing. Everything is sacrificed to profit and to material prosperity… Even our pleasures have become mass movements, media-controlled… and exploited by commercial enterprises.”
-Paul Tournier in Creative Suffering

I’m not saying I agree 100%, but there ARE some ways it seems Africa is more ‘in touch with the nature of things’. Little is taken for granted and relationships are more important than currency. There is a freedom in simplicity and a security in a vast network of family and friends. Thoughts?

This is the boys' new instant bff who left today for an extended
furlough. Naturally, they are grieving, but, as with all the other
partings these last months, we know we will see each other again
someday. Andrew is their hero as someone a bit older who really
knows about lego creations and building castles and sandpits! When
Andrew came over with a carved wooden sword and shield we had to
build some too! =) Anna likes to call him 'Andrew Bandrew' for
whatever reason… We will miss you Andrew! We are praying for safe
travels and fun times for you!