keep stacking those cups

34. creating things bigger than us

This is a picture of terraced rice fields in Bali, Indonesia from when I visited that amazing country in 2004. I know that I didn't create those rice fields, but somebody did. I wonder if they ever stand back and are just in awe of the immensity of what they have made with their own two hands. Two hands that are small and seemingly insignificant but can create such incredible things...

I love things that are bigger than me. Whether that's being in Yosemite Valley and looking up at the enormous granite walls surrrounding me, or going into a library with endless shelves of books and books and feeling so excited about all the possibilities of what I could discover on those shelves, or working with a mission trip group building a church, or giving another half an hour of help to a student who is struggling and just doesn't get it, only to watch the clarity come and the lightbulb turn on and to realize that their learning and success is something so much bigger than me.

And #34 originated from two boys who stayed in at recess today to build a structure out of these stackable cups in the classroom. I was eating my lunch and preparing for a science test review lesson, when they got my attention: "Mrs. Fox, look! It's bigger than us!" The colorful wall of cups they had stacked did, indeed, reach higher than their heads and that was the moment that they had been waiting for: when it was bigger than them.