A man in Pueblo, Colorado is helping blind children ride bicycles. His foundation raises money to get tandem bicycles so that even though they cannot see, they can still experience the feel of cycling.
How wonderfully refreshing and inspiring is that!
Stephanie
Having grown up several hundred miles away in Florida, sometimes being out in the Texas flora feels a bit like there's something missing. I've been here for about seven years now, so things aren't quite so jarringly alien as they were when I first came here. Take, for example, mud. I didn't really encounter true mud until I was an adult. My little corner of the world was all sand and red clay, so thick, tar-like, crusty mud was pretty novel to me--though the real kicker was realizing why people here didn't wear flip-flops in the rain unless they were wearing black pants.
Anyway, things still feel a bit off here sometimes; there aren't really any pine trees, making the abundance of oak feel oppressively cave-like at times; people swim in manmade lakes, which always makes me think about whether my vaccinations are current or how much algae is going to rub off on my swimsuit; and upper middle class families actually compete over growing azaleas.
Most of all, I'll get to missing my little stretch of the Emerald Coast which from my childhood has represented the Infinite to me and so had become a terrestrial cathedral of sorts for my heart and my mind to spend some time as the slightest glimmer of God's Presence as He passes by--vast, deep, and uncontrollable but something you can touch the outer edges of, like the hem of His holy garments. In the absence of the rhythmic rumbling of the waves, though, every once in a while I'll catch a good bit of clear sky that goes on forever but that I can also touch with just the very tippiest tips of my fingers, and it'll do just fine.
Stephanie
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Photograph taken the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
May 10, 2008
Houston, TX
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