As spring starts to creep up on us, I am starting to spend more time gardening. One of the things I have always enjoyed about working on the farm, is the time I have to think. About things. Lots of things.

As the rest of the world continues to make my head spin, I think about where we have gone wrong to shape a world where such terrible things happen, where people do such evil. I am boggled by how we can have such different views on the best way to deal with the evil among us.

Last weekend, as I sat in the dirt pulling weeds, it occurred to me that maybe people were more mindful of the world when they had more time to think. Were we better prepared to deal with each other when we spent time thinking about things? We have crammed our lives full of convenience (and trust me, I love it); and in our massive amounts of leisure time, we seem to be seeking ways to escape, instead of appreciating the world around us.

There is a lot of free brain time when you are doing manual work - gardening, sewing, quilting, spinning, cooking, cleaning. But a lot of the people I know fill that time up with iPods and phones - so even when they are giving themselves the time to think, they choose not to. I am not really sure all of this leisure and entertainment time is a good thing for us as the human race. Well, no - that is not really true. Based on what I see around me, it is definitely not a good thing.