This world is SO wonderful!

I sometimes--actually, with a fair bit of regularity--run across a story that reminds me how truly wonderful this life is. It's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of my own existence, to begin to believe that what I experience is pretty much what life is like.

And then I hear about a guy like Paul Woods. He's the 44 year old man who's driving from Alaska to Virginia--a trip of more than 4,500 miles--on his Toro lawnmower! He's on his third engine, has only three of his original five gears, and can reach speeds of up to 15 miles an hour . . . when he's not weighed down by the grocery cart he's pulling as a trailer with his tent, his tools, some food, and his dog, Yoda. Oh, and he left in 2005!

Woods says that he was in Alaska caring for his mother, and that with her death he's now on an odyssey to claim the house (in Virginia) that she left him in her will. Why he's doing it on a lawnmower isn't reported in any of the news stories that pop up when you google this. (83 as of tonight!)

But I don't really care why he's doing it. What matters to me is that he is doing it--that somewhere out there there's a guy who's riding across the country on a lawnmower. With his dog in a shopping cart/trailer. And who's living a life I could not even begin to imagine.

What matters to me is that life includes so much more than what I'm experiencing, so much more than I'd ever be able to experience . . . yet it is being experienced! Life is so much more vast and wide than my little parcel, yet I am part of that vastness. My life is a part of the rich tapestry that is Life. Yours, too.

Isn't that wonderful?

in Gassho,

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