Make Mole Hills Out Of Mountains

What are the mountains in my life? In yours? And what are the mole hills? Even these are pesky. I remember how my son, Wally, when he was a young boy went to visit his grandparents in southern Minnesota one summer and Grandpa gave him a gun to shoot gophers with. He told me later how he found a gopher hole and situated himself to wait until he saw the gopher. It didn’t take long. Little gopher’s head appeared above his hole and Wally’s gun went off. He'd hit and killed the little gopher.

Wally went back to the house and cut off the feet to take to the county office where he got money for the gopher’s feet. But he couldn’t spend that money. He had caught just a fraction of a minute’s glimpse of the little gopher’s eyes looking into his before he’d pulled the trigger and they were so innocent and pure that he wished all his life he hadn’t pulled that trigger of the gun.

I found a little sign with the words of the title of this blog on it somewhere and pasted it to my computer. It always reminds me of that incident in Wally’s life. 

Farm life is full of hard moments. We lived on a ranch in southern Oregon for eight years  and I found out this. We had inherited a flock of hens from the previous owners and I never killed one of them except, and here’s my own true confession. There was one little black hen that started eating the eggs in the nests of the chicken coop. She wouldn’t quit and  one day I grabbed her by the feet and took her squawking to the wood shed where I chopped off her head. I’ve never forgotten that. I’m sorry about it whenever I think of it. I can still hear her cries. It's the only time I’ve ever killed anything but an insect. 

There is no way to make a mole hill out of a mountain. It would be absurd to even try. But a mountain can become a mole hill And in time it can even be reduced to nothing. How? By seeing it properly through the lens of intelligence. Get off the mountain. Climb down and walk away. The farther away we get from the mountain the smaller it becomes Troubles are often reduced when we cease giving them our attention. We can walk away, we can walk around, we can make nothing of them in our own minds by replacing them with thoughts of truth and goodness. Mountains of troubles can be cast out altogether so they no longer appear even as mole hills. 

As I write this blog I am plagued with another mountain. It is a screaming baby who wouldn’t quit. Robin has complete charge of the little guy since I am not able to lift him and she is going crazy. It’s been going on all afternoon. Until now. This moment the air is quiet. The baby has quit his crying and is going to sleep, I think. Sometimes the mountain falls into the sea of tranquility. Let’s hope this has happened now.