My new favorite swear. And requisite souvenir.

Dear friend,

Yes. Thanks for asking. The trip was incredible, aside from the parts where I took "live like you're dying" quite literally, and spend two days huddled in our hotel room. What you're looking at is my favorite souvenir. I know. I didn't see it coming home, either. But let me explain.

We were almost done with our train ride through the alps. It was incredible. Pictures don't do it justice, really. But sometimes the stories that we gain fascinate me. Turns out, in the town of Tirano, just south of the Italian alps in 1504, there lived a fig picker named Mario. It's said that the town was in the midst of being half dead from the Plague, or Covid 1504, or something. But one day, while he was out picking his figs, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Mario. "Build me a church" she said, and I will end the plague in your town. So for the next twenty two years, Mario labored away. And finally, after twenty two years, the church building was finished. Probably because Mario was a fig picker, and needed to take some on line classes in architecture, and You Tube some videos on structural engineering. And then, miraculously, after twenty two years, the plague was OVER. And ever since the building into which Mario poured his best years, has still stood. Pretty miraculous, I guess. And miraculously pretty, by all accounts. (I mean, it was over a mile from the train station, and we were only going to get to look in the windows. But it sounds nice)

Why do I mention this? Because, friend, that's always the danger involved in going to work every day. You can, pretty easily, end up a a freaking fig picker (copyright pending). You can work on building an empire, or a legacy, or a net worth, or a building. And everyone around you will move on, and, eventually, die. I would never make fun of faithfulness. It's too important of a gift that you can give the world. Just make sure that every day you're showing up, you're investing in what's truly going to stand the test of time. Because that building will fall, eventually. The fact that it hasn't yet is probably the real miracle. But the people inside it-- the people along side you-- they are the REAL mission. They're were you're going to really make a difference. They'll be the ones who really stand out. Yes. they'll disappoint you. They won't all look like wins. But they will touch others. And so you will touch others. From someone who chose the life of a freaking fig picker every day-- you can do better. Build up others. Not bricks or stones or Legos. People. Because that will be the real miracle.

thus spake,

me.