Getting It Together.

So today is the most glorious and inimitable Saturday, the most popular day of the week for all things fun and family and lazy. Today has afforded me the rare opportunity to have the house to myself in the quiet sunlight that comes through the windows. I've been quite lazy and a little domestic (i.e. I used the microwave and am doing laundry) but what's really great is I've had a chance to tie up some loose ends.

The thing I find about tying up loose ends, though, is that there always seem to be question marks dangling off of them.

Maybe this is a trait that's unique to me. For example, I located my itenerary for my trip back to New York and then home and found that everything was in order. I contacted my dear MIRYAP (missionary-in-residence for young adult programs) for my weekly check-in (as per my program) and asked her about travel plans as well. Then I sat back, expecting to feel a sense of contentment--you know, that feeling you get when you've checked something off the list.
I didn't feel any such thing.
Instead, I found myself wondering how I'm going to manage this whole leaving bit once I (seemingly) just got used to staying.

When I left home, many people I spoke to expressed concerns about my safety. Now that I'm returning to it, I think life at home...Beardstown, Greenville...is a lot more dangerous than life at Rising Hope. At least, it is for me. It is so easy to get comfortable at home. All that comfort surrounds me like a buffer. Complacency settles in around my shoulders and Comfort bubble-wraps me in, away from the world's, the US's, Greenville's urgent problems. It's easy to stay on top of things when I'm in the nation's capital working with the poor while the rich (and occasionally oblivious) legislate away. Of course homelessness seems urgent to me when I work with the homeless every day and suddenly one of our people goes missing for 5 days. Of course it seems urgent when a critical resource center for my friends and coworkers is in danger of being shut down.
How urgent will it seem when I'm in a classroom surrounded by other comfortable people like me?
How urgent will it seem when the homeless are hidden in St. Louis alleyways 50 miles away?
How urgent will it seem when I'm in the Union at 1 in the morning watching The Dark Knight when it comes out on DVD in February?

Although I understand that I don't have to feel that all-out sense of urgency every minute of every day, I still fear the creeping power of comfort, which leads to complacency, which leads to apathy. I know it will be a temptation, and it's a sweet one; it comes so stealthily. But now that I know what I know, home has become the dangerous place. In the face of all this adversity, diversity, and scattered privelege, I can feel vitality filling my soul and guiding me through.
But home is dangerous. If I'm not careful, this vibrant soul-life will slowly die, and with it will go my true care for the greater problems and issues I've come to notice.
(I don't mean to say in any of this that people at home don't care about these issues or don't work to resolve them--this is not a feeling that minimizes home. It's just a struggle that I anticipate within myself based on the ways that I interact with the world around me.)

I get squirmy when I think about these things. And that's okay. It's usually in my times of general unrest that I get the most done. So, my unrest pushed me forward to think about and research how I could live out my experience at Rising Hope. I find myself, much like Mayjean, seeking shalom. I want that holistic, all-permeating life that integrates my experiences and the experiences of others and of God into one beautiful whole. I simply can't allow myself to let these people, faces, and stories live in a little 2-month compartment in my heart; they deserve more than that and they are more than that to me. I want this to be about my whole life and I want my whole life to be about this. So I thought about the next possible step...


and clicked over to the Peace Corps website.

I read all the material there, then clicked over to another website that gave me a little more of an unbiased history of the organization. Then I went back to the PC site. Did you know that there is a program in Morocco for youth services? Did you know that an ability to speak Arabic is a plus? Did you know that only 6% of PC programs are youth-oriented and only 2 countries in the Middle East are receiving PC volunteers?
Neither did I.
All I knew is that I really wanted to go to the Middle East (or anywhere overseas, but I do really want to go there),
I really loved learning Arabic,
and I've always loved working with youth.
Now, I'm not saying that this is "like, totally definitely completely amazing and I'm so like going to do this." But it's out there. It's a possibility that excites me to no end. On the surface (and I am careful to note that it's only surface,) it seems like a wonderful blend of everything I'd want to do.
I guess I'm just excited. Every big adventure begins with knowledge of the possibility, and now I have the knowledge.
Step One.

Now, it's occuring to me that this is a really rambly post and I'm supposed to be getting Cold Stone with Charles and then seeing Transformers for free at an outdoor film festival. I can't really think of a good way to wind this up elegantly either, something classy like this:

FIN.