DC and beyond

Daena and I drove overnight to DC on Friday/Saturday. We were helping our friend Kathy move, driving her stuff down in a rented moving truck. Eduardo came along, slept most of the way, but we had him shoved in between seats, so I doubt the sleep was too productive. Daena and I hardly slept at all. It was a great fun weekend, but I kept getting hit periodically with waves of exhaustion. I ate a lot over the weekend, and wouldn't be surprised if I finally managed to gain all the weight back that I had lost when Michael and I were sick with the stomach flu over a month ago. But I need my muscle back. I'm such a wimp right now.

The important things about this trip are, in no particular order:

Kathy is going to be great in DC.

Kathy's sister Mary was there in Mile High Stadium in 1994 when we sang and made the rain go away.

I love DC, and wouldn't be surprised if Michael and I wind up living there one day, for awhile at least.

I saw Brian and it was so good to see him. We hung out with his friends at a bar and then a restaurant. And he's doing really good, and that makes me very happy. And he told the story of my wedding... "So Kati was like, 'Okay, we're all going to go here, at this time, and then we'll have a wedding.' And I was like, 'Okay, are we going to have a rehearsal?' And she said, 'Yeah, we'll have a rehearsal here, at this time, and we'll show up and have a rehearsal.' And I said, 'Do you have a cake?' And she said, 'No, but I got this cherry pie at Safeway...'"

I had to send back Tirimasu because for some unknown reason, the restaurant made it with heaps of chocolate, and I can't eat chocolate no matter how much I want to.

I've seen a pizza slice as big as my head before, but never one as big as my torso. Eduardo and I split it. It was pepperoni, and it was really good, and I did not save it for breakfast as I had planned, but ate it as a late night... um... snack.

Eduardo and I both wanted to throw up at the Basillica, and I decided that people who need gigantic churches that are resplendent with gold and riches are naive at best, and will never understand the true core of the faith that they claim to believe in, not when Jesus said to give everything to the poor, and the profits made from the gift shop alone in one day could feed and house a family in Guatemala for a year. And I felt myself take one more step away from mainstream America, because I don't consider myself to be that good, or that holy, or that giving. I'm one of the priveleged few, and I enjoy my laptop and my electricity, and even as a volunteer in the US, I'm so well taken care of, and I have everything I could ever want and how, HOW, could people sit in church on Pentacost and listen to a sermon about the Holy Spirit (referred to as "him") purifying our souls, and be content that that was the extent of the message. How can people feel fulfilled with something so lame that doesn't call them to action to fix the mess that we as a race of beings have put ourselves into. And, god, how completely WRONG is it that I, as lazy and privileged and accepting of everything as I am, feel at all justified in shaking my head at this decadence and want to SCREAM in frustration that no one else in the country seems to GET IT that our houses are not "comfortable", they're "lavish", and that our culture is destructive and oppressive and that it's just not RIGHT that I have so much when so many more have so little.

Eduardo motioned to the gigantic shrine and said, "This is God?" And I thought about this fantasy novel I'd just read where a very powerful lord brought all his new subjects to an overwhelmingly decadent throne room so that they would be awed by him, but his loyal servants who already understood his power and who understood that it wasn't the gold at all that made him who he was, he took them to a room, with chairs. And they sat. And they spoke. And it was the only way that I could rectify the existence of the shrine I was in. Because maybe some people need huge, rich room in order to experience God. And I have no right to feel I'm a better person because I've seen the humanity in those whom I've been told are the worst sorts of people--drug addicts and gang members and thieves, and let's be honest here, probably murderers--and that I find God when I sit and listen to someone who has been shunned and beat down and screwed by everyone else, and there is this little spark in their eyes because someone cared enough not to curse them for just five minutes.

And even for all my self-righteous indignation, I walked through the streets of DC and I enjoyed being who I am and having what I have and I ate a huge chicken salad and I drank some great coffee and I used a bathroom with running water and I flushed the toilet and washed my hands and I didn't think twice about that luxury because that is a part of my worldview--that these things exist here, and that I've a right to them.

We flew home on Monday, and I went straight to work from the airport. On the bus home that night, this older black man sat next to me and began telling me everything that I'm struggling with in my life right now. I can't tell you what all he said, because it's personal to me, although apparently not so personal that this complete stranger didn't already know. I sat on the bus with him a few extra stops, and then got out and walked him to his next bus. I shook his hand as he got on and told him that I didn't know what had brought him to sit next to me on the bus, but I was glad for it. He laughed and said he was just traveling.

Last night, Daena gave me my birthday present. It was an ice-cream cake, seemingly chocolate, but she swore to me it would not give me a headache. Then she said, "Oh! And the rest of your gift... I haven't wrapped it." She went into the kitchen and returned with a large canister of carob powder that she bought in New York when she went to Niagra two weekends ago to see her brother. I had never considered getting carob to substitute the lack of chocolate in my life, but Daena had, and apparently has been looking for carob powder for months.

It's such a simple thing, but it's beautiful. I can't even describe how touched I am by the thought, by the effort. It goes once again to show how lucky I am. I mean, my god, it's a canister of carob, and a cake, but I feel like I could cry in gratitude, and I know I could never be as good a friend to Daena as she is to me.

It's incredible what experiences this life holds. It's incredible who we meet and what we do and say and think, and what people will do for us to show that they care, and how you can love someone still as a best friend even when you haven't physically seen them in years, and that a stranger can sit down next to you and suddenly a pain that has been gnawing at your stomach for months can just disappear. And things change and things stay the same and maybe next year I'll still be in Chicago, or maybe I'll be in the desert, or maybe in another country. I just don't know. But I feel right now, in my gut, that this is a time for choices, and that i need to step up and figure some things out, figure out what I mean to do in this life, and then get on gettin' it done. I've got a lot of people around me who will stand with me, and that's a heady feeling.

Maybe, just maybe, we can fix this world after all.