A confluance of unlikely events.

We were in Baltimore yesterday, the Dude and I, our annual MLK Day trip to the Visionary Art Museum. We'd been hanging around for several hours, in the events building, making a musical instrument of some sort, eating cake. We had looked at the mechanicals endlessly and visited the robots (Ian looked at the photo of the man who built the robots and said "Wow. He was a really good fixer.")

I had somehow gotten him outside, FINALLY. Between the event venue and the main museum, there's a garden and The Sculpture Barn. Ian loves the garden, and staged a coup that resulted in us being in the garden, behind the barn for a while, instead of on the way to the car where we should have been going, where I was trying to get us.

It started to snow. There was a dusting already down, and it started to snow in earnest.

In the Sculpture Barn, there were 2 exhibits. One was a huge chess set, with pieces the size of 4th graders, made out of car parts. The other: hanging on the ceiling, huge Bible scenes and stories painted on enormous sheets of canvas, like sails.

And the sound system was playing, at loud, echoing levels, King's speech at the Lincoln Memorial, the whole thing.

We look up at the canvases for a minute, but it's too loud for Ian, who grabs my hand and leads me into the little log structure in the garden. We climb the stairs to its little tower chamber. Snow swirls around us, coming in through the log lattice roof. Ian is dancing to some mysterious music I can't hear, sliding in the snow.

Dr. King says, "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."

And Ian says, "Mommy! It is snowing! Inside!! Isn't that wonderful?"

And I say, yes, Ian. It really is.