greyskypanerathoughts...

It is one of those perfect days. Low, grey clouds and the rain that falls soft on the earth. The whole earth is still. Only the wind dares stir the trees, grass and leave ripples on the face of the water. I was late to class today; an accidental miss-call from a friend my violent alarm. Awakening shot like consciousness from the barrel of a gun as I stared at the dancing numbers on my stereo clock.

There went my first class.

Not perhaps the perfect way to start a new week, but my host teacher didn’t seem to notice and really, with a day as beautiful as today, I think everyone is at ease. I called my boss to see if he needed me at work…he didn’t and so it was plan A. Panera.

Jack and I found ourselves with a bowl of fantastic soup, the best fontega chicken panini’s I’ve ever had and good conversation. Add to that a cup of hot tea and rain drops on the floor to ceiling windows and you have the recipe for problem solving and the birthplace of thought…or the recipe for no thought at all. Either way, the tea goes down smooth and the talk rises and falls like the breeze through the door as it opens and closes behind each patron.

I watched the keynote from Apple for this year, the launch of the new IPad. Another in a line of gadgets no one needs, but everyone wants. It is an amazing piece of machinery and technology and I found running scenarios in my head to justify the purchase of one later this year. Nothing concrete yet, but I’ll keep you posted. Haiti helps me trump any large superfluous buy on the future horizons. Somehow scrolling the New York Times with my fingers or reading an IBook or painting a digital picture with my fingertips seems emptier than the stomachs of the street children staring at the cold lenses of newsmen.

A few times today I have felt the sinister shadow of self-pity slipping in behind me. I went with very little luggage and came back the same. I did manage to pack in a sinus and ear infection with the dusty, sweaty clothes I crammed into a worn, green, US military issue, duffel bag as I boarded the plane and turned my back to one of the worst disasters in history.

Self-Pity.

Can you imagine that? I who have all the antibiotics and at-your-fingertips medical aid and am sitting in a fully adjustable, heavily padded, office chair in a temperature controlled environment and a fresh cup of coffee a few inches from my right hand. Self-pity?

I grew up in third world countries. I’ve seen poverty, malnutrition, and the empty look of a soul bound in animism and fear. I’ve lived off the warm coast of Ghana on the western side of Africa and I’ve grown playing in the dry, cool, sandstone highlands of Lesotho in the Southern tip of Africa. I’ve known the heat, red dirt and stench of Nigeria’s Lagos suburbs. I’ve walked the winding, claustrophobic passages of Zambian and Namibian marketplaces with the smell of fish emanating down every corridor from the center square. I have seen a few things in my short life and yet I have never looked at food and other blessings quite the same as now. I think I have so much it has become a disease.

It’s like I’m standing in a doorway to a room in some great mansion. I’m looking around the room, but I can’t really see what I’m looking for and I can’t tell why. I see an old chair in the corner, but my eyes are stinging and my eyelids flutter from some invisible auto response. The far end has a window closed by curtains and I walk there and as soon as the curtains come back, a beam of bright light blasts through the gloom like a comet and in its tail dances millions of dusty particles. Haiti was that comet for me. I now see the trappings that blurred my vision, closed my eyelids and kept me from being thankful and for realizing God’s amazing gifts in my life.

There will be two things in the aftermath of this tragedy that will be difficult to balance and to keep in check. The first is to be thankful for all that we have. The second, is not to feel guilty for all that we have. That doesn’t mean unnecessary indulgence, but if God has blessed you, don’t slap His hand away, but thank Him and use that blessing to be a blessing for others. An ear infection doesn’t seem all that bad now does it?