seizures.

yesterday, i spent my last day with the kids at kamp.  i am grateful for my aunt and for the chance to meet these kids, although my heart wrenches with the sadness of it all.  yesterday i had an experience that will be seared in my memory, i am sure.  one of the little boys, who looked to us about eight years old but was about thirteen according to the other boys, looked clearly sick.  he was sipping his porridge, sitting on the concrete, looking about ten pounds thinner than when my aunt last saw him a couple weeks ago.  he couldn't focus, didn't talk, was clearly out of it.  the other boys informed us that, although he has medicine for epilepsy, he hadn't received the medicine for about two weeks.  on top of this, he had severe diarrhea for the last week, but no one had seen him or given him any medical attention.  once the little boy was finished with his porridge, he lost control of his bowels, then leaned back and started convulsing.  one of the older boys, who gained the nickname "doctor" for all his caring and love for the other kids who are sick, even in the midst of grieving his mother's death this past weekend, helped him to lay back so he didn't fall down and smack his head on the concrete.  i've experienced the helplessness of a seizure before, where all you can really do is hold someone so they don't hit themselves and let them shake, at joseph's house.  but seeing this little boy, dirty, covered in his own waste, so skinny, shaking and chattering, coughing from the phlegm in his mouth, breathing so quickly, as he lay on the concrete, abandoned by his mother and by the world, really, broke my heart.  that image is seared on my memory. 


all we could do was wait.  when the seizure was over, doctor took the little boy up to the medical clinic, where they refused to take him with dirty clothes.  so doctor and i brought him out back.  we got a pail of water, and doctor put on some gloves and stripped the boy, cleaning him off with his hands while i tried to help hold him up.  we found a clean pair of shorts in trish's car, but the clinic had no towels to dry him off.  we helped him back inside, where he could now lay down on a cot.  we used our msungu privilege to insist that he speedily get connected to IV fluids.  we sat with him as his breathing slowed a bit and he closed his eyes; whether or not he was sleeping, i don't know.  doctor told me that the other boys had beat him up the previous week because he smelled so bad.  i wanted to cry.  i don't know if this boy will survive, and quite honestly, i don't know if he wants to survive.  he has been abandoned by a mother who may have been told that he was possessed by evil spirits that caused his seizure or that it was her fault for being a witch or a bad parent; he has been neglected by the staff at kamp, by the other children; he can't consistently get the medicine he needs to stay relatively healthy.  


what i want, what the world desperately needs, is more people like doctor, more places like joseph's house, where in the midst of deep suffering, there is deep compassion, care, respect to meet it.  and what i need is to continue to challenge myself to get closer to that suffering, to move past my revulsion at the smells and fear at the sights of suffering, my tendency to want to stay clean, not to get dirty.  when this happens, when we really see and touch each other and allow it to move us, we are transformed and the world is changed.  i pray for that little boy, for healing and wholeness and love, somehow in his life.  may we all be a part of that movement of love in the world.

dresses.

as you drive through the streets of kampala, you see many small shops along the side of the road, selling phone time, sofas, bicycles, food, pretty much anything you can think of.  there are also many shops with dresses and other clothing displayed on mannequins outside the shop.  the first time i saw these mannequins, i noticed that something was different about them.  the second time, i realized what it was.  the mannequins have REAL HIPS!!!!  they are not stick thin like the mannequins you see in the malls in the U.S., wearing size zero clothing and making women feel bad about themselves.  no, these mannequins have real curves.  they all do!  it's been so refreshing that i look for the mannequins whenever i go out.  yes, there are still many ways in which women in uganda do not have the same opportunities as men, are not valued as men are, live in a patriarchal society.  but at least they don't feel the pressure to starve themselves to squeeze into a size zero.  they celebrate having bodies with shape. 

it reminds me of a pretty amazing community meeting at j-house one day.  we had been watching kirstie allie on a daytime talk show, and she was talking about her recent dieting and exercising fad to try to loose more weight.  she was self-deprecating and so negative about her body.  in reaction to this, the staff and residents at j-house made a video for kirstie (i'm not sure if it ever made it to her or not!).  we told her that she was beautiful just the way she is, that having weight on you, having curves, means that you're alive, that men and women at j-house struggle to keep on weight as their diseases progress and death comes nearer; having weight means you are alive!  i'll never forget this moment. 

i hope that women around the world can see themselves as beautiful, their bodies as beautiful as they are, that they can strive for health rather than become unhealthy with an impossible obsession.  i'm grateful to all the real women in my life with real curves who have taught me how to love myself.  ladies, we are beautiful as we are!  let's get ourselves some ugandan mannequins with curves and get rid of this toothpick-thin image of beauty.  let's celebrate our bodies!

rwanda.

**this is a long and intense blog, as a heads up**  last weekend, i had the incredible opportunity to travel to rwanda with a group of four other girls.  we left kampala on a bus around 10:30 in the evening, ending up crammed across the five seats in the very back row.  although this was initially fun to be in the same row together, when all the seats in front of us reclined to give us  just inches of room, and when we hit the potholes the hardest, flying out of our seats, we realized that this back row was bad news.  those who know me know that i often have trouble falling asleep in a bed, let alone a crazy, swerving, bouncing kampala coach.  we arrived at the border between rwanda and uganda around 6 AM, making our way in the dark through immigration, stopping to pop a squat and pee behind a small tin fence with our allotted toilet paper squares (only two).  it was freezing cold, even with long pants and a fleece!  after waiting for an hour or so at the border, we rebounded the bus, grabbing some different seats this time, and were able to snooze for most of our drive between the border and kigali.  the sun seemed so bright when we got off the bus around 10 AM on friday after a long night, and we made our way to the center of town to hit up bourbon street cafe for breakfast and coffee.  i seriously felt like i was at tryst in DC, with similar food, drinks, and even crowd.  after some refueling, we checked into a small guest house and then headed by boda (motorcycle) to the kigali genocide memorial and museum.  it was truly amazing.  the museum is extremely well done, capturing the history of rwanda, the course of the build-up to and execution of the genocide, using art, images, words, and audiovisual media to communicate the facts and the stories.  one of the things that was most striking to me in the museum were that although the hutu and tutsi tribes existed before germany and belgium colonized rwanda, they pretty peacefully coexisted until the colonizers built up and further systematized the differences, making claims about differences of intelligence and skill, giving the tutsi people positions of power and influence.  it also blows my mind that i was nine years old when over a million tutsis and moderate hutus were murdered in the one hundred days, from april to july, 1994.  the brutality of the killings, neighbors and friends killing one another, killing tiny children, is heartbreaking.  the lack of the international community or the UN to intercede is also heartbreaking.  being in the museum also made me think about joseph's house, about what it means to remember well, even when it's incredibly painful.  there is a room full of pictures of those who were killed that family members brought to the museum.  there is a room full of bones where names are constantly read.  and there is a room full of clothing from victims.  the last piece of clothing in that room is a red cornell hoodie, another reminder that i am, that we are connected, especially in this global economy, and that the pain and violence and need for healing is in me just as it is in rwandans.  the museum also does a beautiful job of pointing out our connectedness by highlighting several other acts of genocide that have happened in the world. lastly, the museum contained an exhibit with the pictures of children killed in the genocide, ranging from teenagers to small babies.  the picture was accompanied by the child's favorite food, best friend, last known words or sight, and their means of death.  outside the museum are beautiful gardens, full of symbolic flowers, fountains, torches, and mass graves, containing the remains of hundreds of thousands of victims, remains that are still being discovered and brought to memorialize every year. 

after the heaviness of the museum, the five of us returned to town and searched for a place to eat dinner, which was full of miscommunication and long waits but ended up with a pretty yummy pizza.  we returned to bourbon st. for some ice cream, which was excellent.  we walked to see "hotel rwanda," actually called "Sabena Hôtel des Mille Collines".  it is a beautiful hotel, but we were shocked to find that nowhere at or around the hotel is there any mention of the heroic acts of sheltering hundred of tutsi refugees there.  perhaps it is because the hotel owners were unsupportive of the housing of the refugees… but regardless, it was meaningful to visit the hotel.  heading to bed early seemed like a good idea, except that the guest house also contained a bar which blared a mix of east african and nineties dance music until 7:30 in the morning.  after a bit of sleep, some good conversation, and some more bourbon street coffee (yes, we were obsessed), we checked into a different hotel a bit further out of town near the bus station and hired a car to take us to one of the churches where thousands of people were killed after fleeing to the church for safety.  there were several churches where this took place, one in which a priest even collaborated with the killers and had the church full of fleeing tutsis bulldozed to the ground.  we drove about an hour outside of the city to nyamata.  this was the most heartwrenching part of the trip for me.  as you walk inside the church, the benches are covered in piles of clothing worn by the victims of the violence done in this church.  the ceiling and walls are smattered with bullet holes.  the cloth covering the altar, as well as parts of the ceiling, are still stained with blood.  four thousand people had packed into this small church, where it would be tight to have 200 people on a sunday morning, to seek safety, which had worked in an outbreak of violence several years earlier.  this time, however, there was no mercy.  walking around, seeing the piles of clothing, trying to imagine the horror in this holy place, it was impossible not to cry.  down underneath the church, there is a display of bones, mostly skulls, of men, women, and children killed.  the skulls show bullet holds, machete cuts, and broken pieces from beating.  our tour guide, a man whose parents and family were killed in that very church, shared with us that the soldiers asked if individuals had money.  if the person had money, he or she could pay the soldier to be killed by bullet.  if not, machetes or sticks were used.  imagine, paying your murderer to kill you?  this church also has a coffin displayed under a white and purple flag, the genocide memorial colors.  this coffin contains a woman who was gang raped and then killed by a spear that was thrust upward through her vagina to her skull.  she had a nine month old baby.  the coffin is there to pay a special tribute to the many, many women who were both raped and killed in the genocide.  outside of the church, there are more mass graves, altogether housing the remains of over ten thousand people who were killed inside and around the church.  when our tour guide shared that he had been twelve during the genocide and that his family had died there, i asked what it was like for him to be there, telling the story, seeing the bones, every day.  he shared that it was very difficult and traumatic at first, but it has also given him an outlet to tell the story and make a difference.  "although," he said, "we always say 'never again.' never again will there be another genocide.  but we still hate.  so i don't know if that is true, if we will ever reach never again." 

we stopped at one more site on our way back to town, a site housing the survivor support organization and memorializing thousands more victims who were killed after the UN peacekeeping troops, housed near a technical school, decided to pull out at the beginning of the genocide.  as soon as they did, the genocidiers rounded up the tutsi and moderate hutu in the area, but instead of killing them right at the former UN barracks, they marched them down the road to this memorial site.  there is a flame of hope and another series of name plaques and mass graves.  as we arrived, however, there was a large group of people around one of the mass graves.  the guide explained that the bodies had been buried so quickly after the massacre at this site that they had not been preserved, so the families of the victims killed here had come back to exhume and clean the remains before re-burying them in coffins in a new grave so they could be preserved.  what must it be like for those family members who came here for that task?  what is it like to have a whole country traumatized in such a severe way?  it seems as though the series of memorial sites have helped to really honor those who died and continue in the grieving process towards healing, although our guide spoke of the continued tension between neighbors, learning how to live with each other after living in such intense fear or hatred for so long, how to acknowledge the loss and still live.  seeing the genocide memorials, hearing the stories, seeing the remains, this was perhaps the most moving thing i have experienced in my time here.  to witness and hold such violence and loss, and to pray that healing and reconciliation and justice can come, not just to rwanda but to the world, everywhere there is subtle and not-so-subtle violence and hate.

after all this, we did a bit of shopping at a local market and then tried to find a restaurant with good rwandan food, chez john.  very few people in kigali spoke english, especially compared to kampala, and communicating directions proved to be difficult.  we traipsed up the hill where we thought the restaurant was, only to get lost and ask a boda driver.  he told us, "you need to march down the hill."  when we asked how far, he said 3 km… so, as we were totally lost, we had him go get four other drivers to take us to the restaurant.  which ended up being right around the corner.  we got majorly ripped off, but alas, the price to pay for being completely lost in a city and without even any french-speakers in our group.  chez john, though, was totally worth it.  we had delicious fish, plantains, peas, rice, and cassava leaves as early nineties hits from celine dion and others wafted through the air.  we got the giggles and enjoyed laughing, i'm sure in part to cope with the heaviness of the trip.  we then walked back to town, belting out more cheesy love songs and most certainly scaring over several rwandans who passed us on the road.  after one last ice cream and a failed attempt to find some live music, we rode back to our hotel on bodas for a short nights' sleep before getting up early for our bus back to kampala, where we most certainly did not sit in the back row.  i am grateful for these girls, for conversations that showed our differences, for laughter that showed how we are the same, and for holding the space for each other to experience the genocide memorials while not losing hope.  and i'm grateful to rwanda for remembering so well the story of the genocide and for sharing it.  i pray that the healing there will continue, and that each of us can see with new eyes the places and people we are taught to hate or degrade and to heal from this violence.


(pictures will be coming when the internet cooperates a bit more!)

kindred spirits.

yesterday, i had an amazing day with some amazing women, kindred spirits here in uganda. myself and two other wonderful girls set off from the refuge and hope center for refugees where my aunt volunteers. we took public transportation to the center of kampala, which we jokingly called the times square of kampala. i mean, it was crazy. taxis, motos, people, all narrowly missing each other in the crowded streets. we made our ways, me feeling like a baby duck following a mama in the crazy crowd, to the taxi that would take us to halo house, where one of the girls spent a lot of time volunteering last fall. we rode out of the city a bit and got off to walk to the compound. halo house is a house for fifteen girls, ranging in age from 14 to 19, who were formerly involved in child prostitution or trafficking.  we spoke for awhile with the director of the house, mariam, who told us about the center, about the girls who live there, about how they are rescued from the slums or places of prostitution around the city and offered the chance to come to the house, how they provide family, counseling, school fees, and support for these girls in the two to three years they live in the home and then help them transition back into their communities.  it was inspiring to see mariam's passion and love for these girls, the fact that she's taken a significant pay cut, spends so much of her time with these girls, moved her family to a village further away so they could take in five more girls to live with their family in that village who had been in the same situation.  we spoke about the systemic oppression of women, the effects of poverty, the stigma, the trauma, best practices for working with girls who experienced trafficking and sexual violence.  mariam also spoke passionately about building a community of support where the girls see their true value and worth, spend time with men who are not trying to buy them but only to befriend them, spend time with each other, coming from different religions and tribes, to build peace and understanding.

after speaking with mariam for several hours and touring the house, the girls began coming home from school.  each of them gave us a hug and introduced themselves.  and then, we spent time with them just as we would with any teenage girl.  they asked us about whether we had boyfriends, told us about school and asked what school was like in the U.S., taught us a dance they enjoyed and laughed lots when we looked silly.  then they all sang and danced a traditional song for us, and we sang and prayed together before we left.  they walked us back to our taxi, laughing and chatting, holding our hands, asking us to come back and remember them.  it was absolutely beautiful to spend time with these girls, to see their life and friendship with one another and with mariam.  i thought so much of my ladies at polaris, of how i wish they could meet each other, how i wish mariam could come and see the drop-in center.  it is so incredible to make a deep connection with another person with the same passion, across cultures, countries, languages.  i'm so thankful for that time!

the girls trying to teach us how to dance!

we rode a taxi back to the center of town, and finally found the taxi that would take us closer to where my aunt and uncle live.  we hopped on the taxi, turned the corner, and were stuck in a giant traffic jam.  we sat there for probably at least 40 minutes without moving.  thankfully, though, we were right in the center of the action, and there was lots of food that haryet, my beautiful new ugandan friend, hung her head out the window to order for us (as it was now 8:00 and we were really hungry!).  we got meat on a stick, grilled sweet banana, and then things got crazier.  as we teased missy, the other american in this beautiful trio, about her being a vegetarian and loving fish, the ugandan man sitting next to her and laughing at our conversation insisted on buying her a 7,000 shilling fish (about $3, a lot of money for food here - meat on a stick was only 500 shillings, or 20 cents).  after laughing about this and seeing missy turn very red, haryet then encouraged us to buy a calves hoof.  a hoof!  we got a steaming back of hot calf hoof, but the woman wouldn't give us a bowl, so we just sat there in the taxi in the jam, giggling about this giant, hot, nasty looking hoof that haryet was going to eat and i was going to try.  we finally started moving, and we met my aunt at an italian grocery store, where we left missy and her fish and traveled back to my aunt's neighborhood.  my aunt dropped me, haryet, and our hoof off at a local bar and restaurant to hear this ugandan band, qwela, play.  haryet left her hoof with the security guard - ha! qwela was amazing.  so fun, such good beats, beautiful songs.  we sat around a campfire, drinking sodas, sometimes dancing, and enjoying the music.  it was quite lovely.  then, a bit after 11:00, haryet and i headed out, waving down two boda-bodas, or motorcycles.  haryet explained in luganda (thank you haryet!) where i needed to go, and i hopped on, riding with the wind in my face back to the compound.  i do love motorcycles!  i got back, gave the driver 2,000 shillings, and then headed inside.  the guard laughed at me when he asked wasn't i cold, and i replied that i was!

haryet and me with our hoof and some casava.

haryet, missy, and me - kindred spirits.

i am grateful for this day, for riding public transportation with my friends, for eating crazy food, for visiting an amazing ngo, for seeing a fantastic band play, for a much different experience of uganda, and mostly, for three amazing women, mariam, missy, and haryet, kindred spirits that i have had the privilege of meeting here on the other side of the world.

creatures.

this is more of a funny post than a serious one.  i am used to hearing creatures in the night crawling around my room.  the washingtonian mice have succeeded in terrorizing our house, evading traps of all kinds (except for some of megan's magical traps baited with peanut butter inside a nylon stocking).  my roommates can attest to this fact.  these mice have succeeded in dancing across our kitchen counters, running out of our stairs in front of house guests, and even, one fateful night, using the curtains in my room as a playground.  as i’m trying to fall asleep, it’s common to hear little nibbling noises or little feet going pitter patter across my floor.  quite honestly, it grosses me out.  i know that all creatures have the right to live, even the mice.  i'd just prefer if they did it outside of my walls, thank you very much.  

one of the reliefs of living in this house in uganda has been to escape the terrors of the mice.  however, i've still had some funny animal run-ins.  yes, the lions roaring outside my tent in the night were pretty terrifying.  there have been birds chirping outside, the sounds of the dog digging around in the bushes, and incidents with chasing escaped chickens back into their chicken pen.  but the creature that has most closely taken the surprise factor for me here in uganda is the lizard.  they've crawled into the bathroom while i'm using it.  they've creeped across the walls while we’re eating our meals.  the latest shock was as i turned on the hall light the other night, and a lizard dropped from the ceiling right in front of me onto the floor, running down the hallway.  as surprising as they are, though, i must say that i prefer the lizards creeping about to mice.  anyday.  i mean, how cool is an animal that communicates by doing push-ups? :-) 

children's prison.

this week, my aunt took us to a children's prison on the outskirts of the city.  kamp, as i'll call it, is a "children's rehabilitation centre" that was started, we think, by the british back in the 1950s or so.  when my aunt's friend, the director of foodstep, first came to the prison two years ago, the two hundred children living there were all naked so that they wouldn't run away and would be easily spotted by local villagers who would return them for a reward.  children from babies through 18 years were staying together, boys and girls in the same dorms, dirty and malnourished.  they had no access to running water, medical care, education.

my family with the kids who were around at kamp.

so why are these children in a prison?  a variety of reasons, or lack of reasons.  some of them have committed crimes, but these are very few.  one teenage girl is there because her stepfather was raping all the girls in her village, and she was next; so she hit him on the head with a lead pipe, which led to his death and her imprisonment.  another sixteen year old boy is in the prison for "playing sex."  some of the children are there because their father remarried and their stepmother wanted them out of the house.  some of their parents took them their because they were being "too bad."  (my parents sometimes jokingly threatened to send us to finishing school for poor manners, but i cannot imagine being taken by my parents to a prison for acting out at home.)  some children there are orphans with no where else to go.  and many, mostly the very young children, were rounded up in downtown kampala for begging on the streets (usually with mom watching nearby) and brought to the prison for begging.  these little ones are the victims of generational, systemic poverty, and all they know is how to beg.

being at kamp broke my heart.  there are close to two hundred children there right now, but during our visit, many of them were at school.  in this, there is hope.  the work of foodstep has brought running water, sponsors for children to go to school or vocational training, clothing, supplemental nutrition like milk, hygiene products.  foodstep has also advocated for several of the children who were there for no real reason other than being orphans to be released to a home that the non-profit runs.  during our time at kamp, we visited the five children who were in the local health clinic, where other children were taking care of them despite lack of medical attention or knowledge of local health workers about their conditions.  it was meaningful for me to be at the bedside with these little boys and girls, amazing how comfortable i felt despite language, age, and cultural differences to hold a hand, bring water, provide presence, thanks to joseph's house.  we then went to the children's worship service, where the kids sang many songs and shared testimonies.  this was one of the most hilarious moments of the day - the kids were singing a song that i didn't recognize or understand.  the song went:  "Jesus is a weein-ah man, a weein-ah man, a weein-ah man, a weein-ah man."  my sisters and i exchanged glances - what in the world were they saying?  Jesus is a weiner man??  it wasn't until the next stanza that we got it:  "satan is a los-er man, a los-er man, a los-er man, a los-er man."  haha.

sitting at the bedside with one of the girls in the clinic.

after worship, we walked past a cell where six children had been locked up for about two weeks.  they hadn't received food that day.  they had no shirts on - they were in "black out."  we touched their hands as they reached through the bars.  again, the tears were close.  as we walked back towards the cars, we played with the kids, doing hand clap games, exchanging english words for luganda ones for hand, sun, eye, head, drawing pictures in the dirt.  we gave them some toothbrushes and other things that we'd brought.  as we were leaving, several of the little ones made a motion with their hand, from their mouth to outstretched, asking for money.  i had none, and it broke my heart that this is all they knew to ask for.  love is what you need, i wanted to tell them, and that you will always have.

clasping hands with the kids locked in this tiny cell.

playing with some of the kids.

as greg boyle writes in tattoos on the heart (still favorite book!), "recognizing that we are wholly acceptable is God's own truth for us - waiting to be discovered."  these children have been told they are bad, they are useless except for begging, that they must be hidden away, punished.  the truth that i want for each one of them and for all of us is that they, that we, are loved, deeply loved, and that is our deepest truth.  our belovedness defines us at the deepest level - not what we've done or what others say about us, but our wholly acceptableness that God delights in.  i hope and pray that in the next several weeks of spending more time with these children and continuing to support the work of foodstep, that truth will sink deeper and deeper into these kids' hearts, healing the wounds of abuse, neglect, rejection, and criticism.  may we all know more fully our own core goodness and light, and may we live in that light as our deepest truth.

be on watch.

we just returned from our second safari in uganda, one to kidepo national park in the northeastern part of uganda.  the ten of us (five in my family, five in my aunt and uncle's) drove in two safari jeeps a total of about 12 or 13 hours up to this part of the country.  this is not, mind you, because it is hundreds and hundreds of miles away; it is because the roads, especially up north, are so poor.  potholes that swallow up the whole road, and then, no road at all.  enough said.  the main reason for this is that it has only been in the last several years that this part of the country became safe, that the LRA (lord's resistance army) moved into sudan and the democratic republic of congo, among other countries in the region.  we met a friend of my dad's co-worker, who told us his own story of being abducted by the LRA while he was in primary school, a common occurrence, imprisoned when he fled back to his hometown as a "rebel," then nearly killed before he managed to escape.  he now runs a church and a radio broadcast that has been a beacon of hope for his fellow ugandans in the midst of the violence (this reminded me of the concept of post-traumatic growth, where someone who experiences trauma grows in their sense of connection, purpose, or spirituality after a trauma to a level surpassing their pre-trauma experience).  there are several NGOs working with children and adults who have escaped the LRA, but the region is still deeply affected.  not to mention the signs that explain what landmines look like so that local people don't touch them.  it was heart-wrenching to think about all that this country and others nearby have gone through, especially when it has taken such a toll on the children.

the beautiful mountains in northern uganda.

the time in the national park, however, was quite lovely.  we slept in bandas in the bush the first night, where molly and i heard lions roaring right outside (and yes, i became terrified and insisted we push our beds and mosquito nets together... like that would somehow protect us from the lion... :-).  we saw jackals in the morning, some more elephants and buffalo and giraffes, and then, the most amazing thing, we saw two momma lions with their SIX cubs.  it was pretty incredible!  we toured a local village, where they danced and sang and showed us their traditional way of life on our way home, and we also stopped a rhino preserve to see the rhinos napping.  although we are all grateful to be out of the car, we had lots of good cousin bonding time in the hours and hours in the "kid" car.  it was a great trip!

two momma lions and their six cubs... pretty amazing!

elephants!

sisters at the rhino preserve.  naptime for the rhinos.

while being on safari, there is a sense of being constantly on the lookout.  i feel this way sometimes when stargazing during a meteor shower.  i don't want to close my eyes for even a second, for fear i will miss something amazing.  i am constantly looking around, constantly expectant of a beautiful moment.  i wonder if this is perhaps also what Jesus meant when he told us to be on watch, that we never know the day or hour the Lord may come.  i know many christians traditionally interpret this passage to mean the end times.  but what if Jesus is also talking about all the small, beautiful moments in which the kingdom of God is breaking through?  what if be on watch means to be always looking, always expecting beauty and love in the world, looking for God in each moment?  i want to continue to be on watch, not just for animals in the bush, but for moments of beauty in the people and places all around me.  because i do believe that when we look in expectation for the beauty of Love breaking through, we will find it and find ourselves transformed by it.