Preparation

Our family took two trips this summer. Our first trip was to New Orleans for a national youth gathering for our church. The second trip was a cruise leaving out of New Orleans. We stayed in the same hotel for both trips, the Maison St. Charles.  While renovated, some of the buildings were originally from the 1840's. There were the galleries and courtyards with fountains.  Walking around the French Quarter with it's ornate balconies, viewing the beauty of the St. Louis Cathedral, touring the Garden District with it's stately houses and manicured lawns, every place we visited fairly screamed history.



So many places, I would love to run my fingers across the fretwork; let the filtered light of stained-glass windows fall across my face, rock within the chair shared for a century. Would it be glib to restate the cliche if walls could talk? Oh, but I wish they would. Tell us the tales lost to the historian.

I just wanted to be wrapped up in a cloak of the past, for a while. How much could I absorb? To know of those lives so long ago. Something to be learned from the misery, of the joy, of the toil, of the leisure. Knowledge in the despair and the triumph.   I do not wish to dwell there, but to understand.

For all of us, history is a foundation. To some extent, it has made all of us. From the beginning of time, not just our time, decisions have built the paths that have lead to us. But, just like our own histories, they do not have to define us. Ah, but to grasp the cause of the journey, that would be a blessing.