Happy

I was walking home from class this afternoon when I saw Avery bolt across the sidewalk with Erik playfully chasing her. When he caught her he lifted her up and she reached up and touched the leaves in the trees above them. I made a mental recording of it and commanded my brain, "Remember this." They were so cute.
So in one of my classes we're studying the Vietnam War and we've been watching this documentary from National Geographic - emphasis on the graphic. Parts of it are really disturbing. I've noticed more and more this semester that a huge portion of history is made up of horrible events of cruelty and carnage. I learned about a city, Munster, Germany, that was taken over by a group called Anabaptists (a group that believed that babies and children should not be baptized, but wait until they are adults when they can understand the importance of their decision) during the Reformation. The Holy Roman Emperor deployed forces and the 20 leaders that took over the town were forced into a cage that was hung from the town cathedral, where they slowly starved to death in front of the townspeople. It is believed that the cage and their bones hung from the cathedral until the time of the French Revolution, as a lesson to everyone else. Messed. Up.
It's times like these when I am so grateful that I and my loved ones do not have to live in constant fear of things like war or persecution. In terms of historical probability - living where we do in this time is like winning the lottery. We are very fortunate.