Back on Track

I find that the degree to which I want to write in my blog is directly proportional to the amount of schoolwork I should be doing instead of blogging.  Thus, with paper and application deadlines looming on the rapidly approaching horizon, I am here :-)  Getting back on track with this blogging thing.

It will be impossible for me to update on everything that's happened since my last post in July.  Here's the cliff notes version, though: I finished up my time at Fuller.  I went to Goma, DRC--it wrecked me and transformed me.  I started my 4th and (hopefully) final year at seminary.  I am on track with the ordination thing, and am applying for CPE residencies next year.  I am loving my friends, and my family--I am just smitten with my whole community right now.  

The time I spent at Heal Africa in Goma, DRC was perhaps the most blog worthy event thus far.  It is impossible to sum up my experiences when I filled up a whole journal's worth of thoughts during my time there.  But, fear not! :-)  You can read my thoughts (and other eloquent entries from my teammates) at our trip blog:  Goma Team Blog.

Also, I'm sure many of you have heard news of the worsening crisis currently unfolding in Goma, and all of Eastern Congo.  I encourage you to educate yourself about the cause of what has been dubbed a "humanitarian catastrophe" here:  "How We Fuel Africa's Bloodiest War."

This article gives one of the best, most accurate summaries of the situation in DRC that I have found.  If you want to learn more about HEAL Africa, one of the foremost organizations responding to this crisis, you can go to their website: www.healafrica.org

It's hard to know what else to say when so much time has passed!  The last few days have been a rollercoaster with the election: I echo my friends when I say that I am proud to be an American, but disappointed to be a Californian.  Watching Obama win, and celebrating that win in Berkeley, is something I will remember forever.  It was incredible to see the impromptu gatherings that took place, where perfect strangers reached out to each other with hugs, high fives, music, and celebration.  I am proud to be a part of history in this way, and I thank God that elections can be won not on the polemic of fear, but the polemic of hope.

My heart is heavy, though, thinking about Prop 8.  While hope won the national election, I think fear ruled on this statewide scale.  I know I cannot understand fully the effect this decision has on my LGBTQ sisters and brothers; but I grieve with them for the pain this decision has caused.  After the elation from Obama's victory, this was a sobering reminder of how much change still needs to come.

I'll leave you with this picture I took last night at one of the impromptu block parties my friends and I stumbled upon on our way home from a walk around downtown Berkeley--it captures, for me, the joy of the evening and the joy I've been feeling in my recent life!