“Between the trains going by and people going west and coming back and highways going through, there’s a sense of everyone wanting to be elsewhere.” ~ Dan Maginn quoted in the KC Star

Amid the concrete and steal of downtown. Atop a six-story garage filled with cars, grows a field of prairie grass. There rests an empty boxcar. The art was inspired by the idea of Kansas City as a crossroads. But more than the city growing up out of the prairie, the image depictes our desire to be elsewhere.

Not our desire to be out of Kansas City (though with the Royals and Chiefs…), but the desire of city dwellers to find simplicity. To break from the busyness of life. Yet no matter where we land, the same business of life creeps into our reality.

As though simplicity is only a mirage – a prairie grass rooftop.

But is simplicity a mirage? Is simplicity, a break from busyness, impossible?

Or do we continue to schedule? Continue to make appointments? Continue to skip rest? Even while we gaze out at the skyscrapers of our reality longing for the prairie…