Our mother and all seven of her children were born in Southeastern Idaho. When I was five years old we moved to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Many of my fondest memories were of our journeys back home to Blackfoot, where my mother was born and her family remained. Those trips in our big blue Pontiac rocket were full of multiple stops along I80 as we traversed America. At the time, the interstate was being built and they would blast hillsides away to create flat surfaces for roads. My mom and brother George were both certified rock hounds. Whenever mom saw that there had been blasting, she pulled the car over and we sweltered in the car while she and George went digging through the dirt. There, among the rubble, they uncovered geological treasures from eons ago. We three little girls in the back of the station wagon had to share our space with wooden boxes that were filled with rocks.
Then, once we arrived in Blackfoot, part of the adventure was walking out into the desert surrounding Aunt Ruth’s white clapboard house. There we collected arrowheads buried in the sand, a glint of their flintknapped edges shimmering in the sunlight, exposed by wind shifting sand around cactus and sage.
My mom has made her way back up to Heaven, but my brother George is still earthbound, and he is still certified. Every one of our children and grandchildren has been blessed by his gracious digging adventures. He’s given each of them little rock collections that identify each kind of gem this earth has given. They all have trilobites that they dug out themselves. Last Thanksgiving, he lugged what appeared to be a ton of rocks in the back of his truck and laid them out on Ann Marie and Michael’s driveway. Little chisels and hammers and brushes were laid beside them. Everyone got to discover their own ancient fossils hidden in those stones. Fish who lived many thousands of years ago appeared in the unearthing.
I think it’s pretty fitting that the name George begins with the letters Geo. If you know Latin or Greek you'd know geo means earth or ground. There’s geography, geology, geometry, geothermals, geophysics, orb shaped geodes... and there’s George.
When I was an adolescent Mom was left to handle our world on her own, thousands of miles from home and family with the sting of marital betrayal. My father abandoned the lot of us. We watched our mom work through the process of unearthing herself. An independent soul from birth, it took some humbling for her to re-find the core of her soul. I ache for her, looking in on it from my grown-up perspective now. I still get a pang in that spot between my bellybutton and my heart when I recall the sound of her muted sobs through her bedroom door late at night. Stepping back and looking in, I realize when she lost herself, she found her Lord and when she found her Lord, she found herself. What an interesting cycle.
Someone once explained to me that the position of prayer is actually a natural conduit for energy flow. We receive energy through the top of our heads and release it from the soles of our feet. Maybe that's why, when people enter holy places they remove their shoes and their hats. Perhaps that's why Jews wear yamulkes on their heads, to keep bad energy from entering. I don't know.
We work so hard at "becoming" we forget it is just as important to "un-become".
I especially like this quote by Emily McDowell, mostly because I need to be reminded that while we are on the earth part of our job here is to do some serious unearthing. The winds of life may blow some of the sand away, exposing us to the heat of the sun. But to truly release ourselves, there has got to be some measure of personal digging, scraping, brushing and blowing away.
My brother George Hansen, unearthing.
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| Geo training his 4 kids how to hound. |
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| Thanksgiving digging with the Joe. All the grands dig Uncle George. |
