Let's run this backwards, or forwards--or hell, just start in the middle

I feel like an explanation to this blog's domain name and even to it's title might have been appropriate clear in the beginning. Or at least while I was in Africa. My foresight wasn't half bad on the choice of words though. However, it hasn't been until I returned and have begun settling in that I truly felt that. So the blog's title "That's Africa Baby" is a bit of a copy-cat line that was used fondly by one of the groups Jill travelled to Africa with in the past. One of Betty Levitov's interim or semester abroad groups. And the phrase so accurately encompasses the mild frustrations and odd, wonderful joys that travelling throughout Africa creates.

Examples....when you want to be anywhere on time. Traveller's toilet. A local on his/her bike with a goat/pig/sheep(dead or alive)/loveseat/bed/couch/rear axle(of varying sizes). Mzungu prices. An over-capacity matatu. T-shirts with inappropriate/misspelled/inaccurate writing.

Read Betty's book and get a good insight into what's African, baby. There's my plug--take it.

"Africa on Six Wheels: A Semester on Safari," Betty Levitov.

And the domain name.

big, contemplative breath...

Maybe it should have been meganinafrica because I feel like I left a big chunk of my heart in Kenya that someday I'll have to go back for and that maybe I left for safe keeping and good reason. But I also took much of Africa back home with me and within me. I feel it literally pressing on my heart at times. Exploring our country's traditions, our culture, and our behaviors has been something my mind goes to frequently. Where do we come from--where is our sense of community and strength coming from or at--how do we value family. And I think most importantly, I am trying to live by the examples my brothers and sisters in Africa showed me of being hospitable, generous, open, joyous, humble, and kind. They may have little, but they live lives that are much more full than many of ours here.

And a nice transition to where I'm at now. Living with little.

It's now almost four months later and I'm in Seattle working as an Americorps intern for Feet First in a program called Quest sponsored by the University Friends Meeting Quakers. I'll hold off on getting into the basics of what exactly I do. I went into this specific program though partly for the spiritual journey. And just today I feel like I stepped off onto the right path of that.

I've been attending Sunday meetings which is an hour of unprogrammed, (meaning no pastor, no singing, no sermon) intentional silence. This is the Quaker version of church. Quakers believe that "there is that of God in everyone" and their testimonies for equality and against violence grow out of this belief. According to Quakers, every person no matter their race, creed, sex, religion, beliefs, sexual orientation, etc is worthy of respect. And each person "has within a seed which will illuminate the conscience and foster spiritual growth." It is through moments of intentional silence that anyone who is willing to sit quietly and search diligently is able to be open to a direct experience of God. Translation is open to interpretation. Meaning I can (and do) sub the word "god" for whatever, like "Susan". "Divinity" though is more what I'm seeking.

Today my mind settle on pacifism, an almost universal principal of Friends.

And it got there because of a few lines that James Naylor, an early leader in the Quaker movement said while he was lying in a field dying. Like very many Quakers at that time, he had been persecuted--flogged through the streets of London, his tongue bored with a hot iron, and imprisoned.

The words.

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to avenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to out live all wrath and contention, to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself so it conceive none in thoughts to any other.