Kum Ba Yah

Today is the Peace Corps' 50th Birthday, which has me thinking about "the path not taken".

In the spring of 2000, a whopping 11 years ago, I extracted a big white envelope from my mailbox with shaking hands and pounding heart and ran to the Habitat student chapter office to open it up and see my fate. I remember yanking the envelope open and feeling my heart leap into my chest as I realized that the contents of the envelope were in a pretty Peace Corps folder. Surely they wouldn't send rejection letters in a pretty folder, right? I sat down on the vortex of a broken old couch in our student office cube and read the papers with bleary tears in my eyes: Conakry, Guinea.

Despite the overwhelming thrill of being accepted after a rigorous process of interviews, letters, apps, medical tests, generic psych evals, and ulcer-inducing waiting, I was disappointed. I wanted to go to Senegal. The only thing I knew about Guinea was that it was somewhere in west Africa, so I got up from the black-hole couch and got on the internet. I read about Guinea, and it didn't really sound like a place I would want to live. I discovered that its neighbors were scary-sounding places that I associated with War and Genocide. I started scrambling for my post-graduation Plan B. (THAT miracle is a blog post on its own).

I decided not to go into the Peace Corps, and I had lots of reasons for that decision. (Jess, your phone call from SA was a big part of that!). But it is kind of incredible to reflect on the "What if?". How different would my life be now if I had packed up for Guinea instead of Georgia? If I had traded in cotton groves and Habitat for the adventure of an unknown country? If you are ever inclined to ponder the decisions of your life, I highly recommend that you watch the movie "Sliding Doors". Freaky, fun, mind-boggling.

Anyway, with all of the revolutions brewing around the world these days, I think it is a great time to reflect on things we take for granted. Like (relative) peace, and religious freedom. Not that we couldn't use a rousing round or two of Kum Ba Yah around these parts as well, but seriously, go to BBC news and just try to wrap your head around everything that has erupted in the world in the past few weeks. I was about to type "pray for peace", but I'm not even sure what to pray these days. Peace, for sure, but sometimes Big Change comes with its share of unrest. Safety, low death-tolls, sanity. Humanity.

My brain is too frazzled to be attempting a well-formed post, and honestly, I don't really understand everything that is going on. But maybe take 5 minutes to just pray for the world today - the US, Libya, New Zealand (earthquake), Egypt, Haiti.

Oh, Lord, come by here.

And if I can get over my existential guilt, I will head back over to Green, Gray, and Grace for my "Investigating Your Stuff" part 2. Because there's nothing like pondering eye shadow ingredients to get your mind off of global revolutions! But in all seriousness - the stuff that we buy and the state of the world are really closely linked. Human rights, petroleum consumption, food production. Famine, climate change, sweatshops, poverty. It would be easier if we could pull those things apart. If I could believe that my lipgloss has nothing to do with human suffering. But NO! It does. And I'm just beginning to learn about all the ways that it does. Sigh. Ok. I've gotta get back to work.

Think Lovely Thoughts. And if this post dragged you down, go here for a pick-me-up.