Piece of Work (by Jimmy Buffett)

It's amazing what you notice in this world if you take a moment to stop and pay attention. A good friend of mine once told me that you can't truly appreciate life until you've taken a day to sit under a tree and look at a single leaf for hours on end ... just studying the colors, the veins, the patterns, the texture, and all the little details that make a leaf as beautiful as it is. It reminds me of the differences between adults and little children. While adults in today's world hurry through a busy life, always complaining that there's never enough time and literally dying because of stress, children are watching ants crossing a hot sidewalk or watching the pods of a dandylion float away in the breeze after they blow on it. I could get a glimps of what my friend was talking about when I looked at his pictures after spending nearly half a year hiking the Appelachian Trail or when I visited Arches National Monument with him. So many of his pictures were of lizards or animals or individual flowers while so many of mine are of landscapes and mountains. It's good to look at the big picture and see where you're at in comparison with the rest of the world, but sometimes it's good to just take a seat under that tree and spend the day looking at that leaf.
Yesterday I left my final island stay early because I got sick. I came back home so I could get some rest and try to get better by the time this last group leaves so I could conduct their debrief for them. Instead of heading back to the house I'm living at, I decided to go to the office instead. The office has a bed, bathroom, and AC just like at home, but at the office there are people who I could count on if I needed them as I tried to rest up and get better. When I went to bed last night in the creature comforts of the office as opposed to the comparatively impoverished dwellings of the island stays, I saw some things that caught me a little off guard. Sure the cat I saw digging through the garbage outside and the giant cockroaches I saw crawling around were quite par for the course no matter where I sleep these days. But, the mouse I saw crawling around on the counter and the spider that was quite literally the size of my hand that was chilling on the kitchen table were a bit more out of the ordinary. The mouse got away before I had a chance to chase it out, which is fine since I don't really have a problem with mice. However, when I saw the spider, once I regained my composer I took the time to try to get a couple of good pictures of it before I killed it (okay, I really do hate spiders, so it's death was really quite emminant). Frankly, I was surprised I slept as well as I did last night in the middle of "the zoo", as my mom referred to it.
Tonight was a little different though. There's one other creature that scurries around and calls out to me no matter where I go that I'm actually quite fond of ... the cicak (chichuck), or a type of gecko. It was pointed out to me once how the cicak proves God's existance because of how masterfully it's made. It can carry it's own weight, vertically or even upside down, on virtually any surface ... something man has attempted to duplicate on countless occassions and has always failed. I saw a tiny cicak in the bathtub tonight ... it was smaller than half my pinky finger. I managed to pick it up and it just sat on my finger, allowing me to look at it like my friend looked at that leaf. Sadly, I didn't spend several hours taking it all in, but in the few minutes I took to get to know my new little friend, I got to notice quite a bit. I was able to see his little chest quickly collapsing and expanding in steady beats as he nervously breathed in and out. I saw those little fingers that so miraculously cling to the walls and ceilings everywhere I go. I learned that he has no eyelids, so instead of blinking he's constantly licking his own eyes one at a time. I learned that he had to face an internal struggle between being afraid of this giant potential preditor and basking in the warmth of my skin.
My good friend who told me his secret of appreciating life through the careful study of a single leaf is dealing with his own internal struggle of not wanting to believe in a God who can allow pain and suffering yet finding it difficult to refute the existance of a higher being when he examines that leaf. Admittedly, it breaks my heart that I can do my part to help lead what were once total strangers to the Lord (those total strangers are now my good friends!), but I can't lead the people who mean the most to me to my Savior. But, that's not the point of what I'm writing ... I just wanted to write this out because I didn't have my camera with me to take a picture of that little cicak. I guess sometimes a camera just gets in the way of truly capturing God's beauty, eh?! :)