Rosa Parks

Streams of people, dressed in Sunday best, with long woolen coats and smiles on their faces.
A woman walking with a single flower, stem wrapped in tin foil.
A father instructing his children why they had come, why they would wait in line for hours.
They had come to pay their respects; they had come to pay homage.
They had come for Rosa Parks and what she had come to mean to each of them.

Suddenly aware of my own aimless running, I felt sweaty and unkempt, and vastly ignorant of the stories that carried them here.

I longed to join the crowd, to stand in line and become a part of the family forming on the West Central Front of the Capitol.

Instead I politely parted my way through the crowd and struggled to finish my run, to hold in my tears, to return to the safety of my dorm room.

I was witnessing something greater than I could understand and they were gracious to let me through.

Perhaps they had come to mourn, but it seemed to me they were celebrating.

And when all is said and done, I don't imagine we could long for anything more than that.

A perfect day

This is what I imagined living in D.C. to be.
A perfect cloudless day.
I wake up, go downstairs to the dining room of my women's dorm and am warmly greeted by not only the ray of sunshine serving up a hot breakfast but tables of young women with a wide array of plans.
We linger over styrofoam cups of hot coffee, catching up on each others' weekends and brainstorming possible churches to visit.
I've risen to return my tray when a new Canadian friend, a Sikh, suggests the National Cathedral.
Aha, the day begins.

Due to the Marine Corps Marathon, the Metro buses are delayed and I arrive at the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul well after the service started.
No matter, I step into the building and outside of our borders.Instantly transported to another land, I am fairly shocked to hear the priest speaking English, for the very architecture surrounding me speaks of another time and place.
Though the sermon is in English the message is clearly an international one, appealing to all who have come, from near and far.
Beautiful and grand, but not quite home.
Some folks stick around for a 12:30pm tour, but I choose a long walk back to the Metro subway station.
Lots of thinking to do and the perfect day for it.

I've come up here for an adventure and no doubt every day here offers that.
But these are the times when I must decide when this adventure ends and the next one begins. They are exciting times, but demanding ones.
I've become well-acquainted with the adrenaline rush of an interview on Capitol Hill and the inevitable exhaustion that follows.
I've repeatedly promised myself to send out no more resumes only to chase down yet one more intriquing job lead later that same day.
Soon, maybe very soon, decisions will be made and the adventures continue, either here or abroad.

In the meantime, I seem to have the best of both worlds, daily dining with friends from many lands.
Tonight we head out for Ethiopian fare- an intriguing first for me.

But for now, its back outside, to catch the tail end of the daylight, to run once more past the monuments and through the crowds -catching snippets of languages, and glimpses of tourists.
Another chance to remember how good it is to be alive.
I wish the same for you today.

"The Blessing", concluding today's service at the National Cathedral:
Remember the poor, visit the sick, pray for peace, and work for justice; and the blessing of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be with you today and for ever. Amen.

U2

Last night, my Nashville-now DC resident friends and I experienced the rare phenomenon of a U2 concert.
After living on Capitol Hill for over a month it was both refreshing and shocking to attend such an event.
Refreshing in that we all felt more like we were in Nashville than DC, shocking in that there is no escaping politics.
I watched the world renowned Bono strut and sing and woo and win the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of cheering fans, packing the MCI arena.
In the words of Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
And in the words of a much older source, “To whom much is given, much will be expected.”
I dare say Bono is neither ignorant of this truth, nor lackadaisical about living it out.

A Bit of Silliness

A bit of silliness really.

My first real night up here, even before moving into my cozy dorm room, I stayed at a friend’s house and watched “Finding Neverland”, a story about Peter Pan, littered with truth. At one point in the tale, Peter, a young boy, is called to account for his writings of his adventures and casually dismisses them as “just a bit of silliness, really”. As the story unfolds, the viewer finds the truth in the silliness and the desperate need for it.

Last Friday afternoon, after hobbling over rain-slicked cobblestone streets to yet another “good interview experience”, I sat in a conference room with the leadership of a media research organization. Dripping wet and exhausted from a long day, I laughed in response to his smiling question, “And what do you want to do when you grow up?”
“I don’t,” I replied grinning, “I don’t want to grow up”.
I quickly followed with an honest and idealistic explanation of my desire to write, and then listened to the Executive Director advise me to chase my dreams. It is not everyday one hears this in an interview, no matter the organization or the town.

It is a bit of silliness really, the relaying of dreams, the restoring of hope, the retelling of truth in a way that makes it readable, almost as if for the first time.

But the more I travel and the wider the scope of lives and jobs I take in, the more I see it all as just a bit of silliness really.

Sitting in the gallery of the House of Representatives, watching the Speaker of the House slam down the gavel and repeatedly attempt to gain the attention and order of a floor full of chatty Congressmen- I see the silliness of it all- our attempt to bring order to chaos, when we are the very cause of that chaos.

Answering ceaseless phone calls from constituents voicing their opinions on upcoming legislation, I see the silliness of it all- as if one person’s thoughts could really make a difference.

Collecting faded Coke cans and old cigarette butts in an effort to clean up inner city D.C. schools, I see the silliness of it all- how could we possibly make a difference by our meager efforts?

But that silliness is essential. It is our lifeblood and without it we will surely fade- fade into something void of the very silliness that bears truth, that maintains justice, that restores hope.

It IS just a bit of silliness really. And I’m so glad it is.

Falling in Love

Last Wednesday a funny thing happened.

I stepped out of Longworth House Office Building and proceeded down the steps to the nearest crosswalk, directly across from the Capitol Building.
The sun was casting shadows across the back of the Capitol amidst a bustle of "staffers" and "members" all on their way home.
(Contrary to how this first sounded to me, neither of these terms have any reference to Country Club membership or employment, but rather to that of the U.S. Congress.)

But on this particular day there was an extra bounce in my step largely due to the familiarity of my walk home.
Elements of the work place have grown slightly more comfortable.
Even the Security guards had greeted me with in the late afternoon with a "welcome back" as opposed to simply a nod or smile.
And yet the air of familiarity has dulled none of the luster of living here.
Quite the opposite, in fact.

As I stole a glance of the capitol before crossing the street, the reality of my present "home" caught my breath.
Could it be?
In such a short period of time?
But yes, it seems true.
I have found myself falling in love with this place.

Yes, love is in the air, along with the lack of humidity, the lushness of the trees, the beauty of the people that flock to this one city from all over the world.
In many ways it feels like world travel brought to my doorstep, yet I still get to speak English to ask for directions.

I am living in a tourist destination and in stark contrast to the last year of my life am now impeding the view at which many are staring.
It is a refreshing change to live among people whose eyes are intently fixed on buildings and statues and not at all on me.
At long last I have exited center stage and become a part of the backdrop and I must say, it feels good.

A Bad Haircut

Its amazing how the simplest things in life can completely level us.

No matter that I daily interact with some of the most powerful folks in our government, or have cracked jokes in the office of the Consulate General of Japan, or made my way through foreign lands in which I couldn't translate the most basic of human needs.
No, apparently, none of those scenarios hold a candle to getting a bad haircut in your home country, half a block from where you live.

At the end of an otherwise marvelous Columbus Day, I swung into Bubbles, the hair salon recommended by friends, in close proximity to my current digs (Thompson Markward Hall- a women's dormitory).
It was a risk, a risk I wasn't sure I was even willing to take till I found myself wrapped in a cloak and seated at the sink, ready for a shampoo.

Darryl was a jovial fellow- kept me in stitches with his hair-rescue stories, declaring he wanted to follow some women home and rid their house of every pair of scissors, to keep them from trimming their own bangs!
"Then they come to me and say, 'Fix it'.
Time's the only thing that can help you now.
I can't do anything to fix it."

I laughed at the tales, not fully recognizing the truth of it in the moment.

I was in and out in about 15 minutes and immediately suffering Hair-cuttee's remorse.
I looked like a bush, a bush that desperately needed trimming.
But I had told Darryl what I needed; and he seemed to know what to do.
Yet the result seemed disastrous.
Well, not quite disastrous, but certainly not beautiful.

I wallowed in my self-pity for the next half hour before finally marching myself back down the block, up the steps and into Bubbles for the second time that evening.
Darryl was gone and would be gone the next day as well.
So I scheduled a "Redo" session with Ginger, the competent appearing woman to Darryl's immediate right.
I felt certain I would have been better off going with her from the start.

Tomorrow turned into today and by evening I found myself once again cloaked and explaining my hair trauma to the astute Ginger.
She took her time doing her "investigative work" only to finally and firmly conclude that I had in fact received a very good cut.
My hair just needed to grow.
Cutting any more would only exacerbate the problem.
In the words of Darryl, "Time's the only thing that can help you now".

It has come to my attention that I am an impatient being.
Not in a humorous way, nor a 21st century, "Why won't my computer go to the next web-page more quickly?" kind of way.
I am not patient.
And as I read only this morning, but all day failed to understand, Love is.
Love is patient.
Even now I struggle to leave it just at that- Love is patient.

There are seasons of sowing and seasons of reaping, seasons of allowing the earth to lie fallow. There is a time to plant and a time to harvest . . . and a time to wait in between the two.
Living in the city, in a dorm, no less, where my meals are prepared and served and the ties to agriculture virtually obliterated to my human eye, I don't see a lot of growing these days, at least not in the fields.
In truth, about the only thing I'm waiting to grow is my hair, and we see what a struggle I've encountered to embrace that truth.

What appeared a grand misfortune, a risk gone ary, even a possible injustice, was, in fact, a pruning of sorts.
My eyes saw a "bad haircut" and my heart would not accept it, till I learned the truth.
Time's the only thing that can help sometimes and Love is patient.
I pray Love is patient with me as I learn to make room for time.

What's a Blog?

A Blog, by any other name is an online journal, an interactive email archive, a personal GPS for your adventurous friends.
A Blog can be whatever you want it to be.
But one thing everyone hopes their blog will be is Well Visited.

A Blog allows technology (a sometimes obnoxious if not impersonal aspect of life) to foster community- an international, multicultural, albeit online, community.

My single favorite feature of this blog is the opportunity to hear your voice.
I confess I have not tried it myself, but it looks like all one must do to get started is click on "Comments" just under the original post.

I encourage you to try it out.
You may be new to Blogging (as I certainly am) but I hope you'll try it all the same.

And Yes, I still have and will maintain my current email account, but will be posting the vast majority of my adventures here.

It's an experiment. Thanks for trying it out with me!

Its a Blog!

After months of eager waiting, it's finally arrived!
In order to better document "Where in the world I am" I have decided to have a blog.
Birthed from a couple of friends in southern Japan, this idea is sure to grow with me as I journey near and far on trails yet unseen.
As many of you loyal readers may already know, I am currently basing myself out of Washington D.C., to get better acquainted with "my homeland".
There is truly nothing like living and traveling abroad to make me starkly aware of how little I know of my own country.
I hope to rectify that here.
Not sure how long I'll be staying, but anticipate some changes in the near future.
Hope this has piqued your curiosity and will leave you coming back for more.
That is the one thing I can guarantee to offer: more.
Happy Trails to you . . . until we meet again.