So, I've been sleeping a lot.
10 hours a night usually. Unless I can sleep in. Then more.

I've been cracking the spines of new books; smelling the delicious scent of fresh ideas; drinking in the wisdom of fine thinkers, philosophers and poets.

I've been writing music which basically amounts to a pitiful culmination of weak melodies and cliche lyrics that I sing at top volume with my impotent accomplice, my guitar.

Occasionally I wail on my djambe.

Often I sit in the morning sun by the big bay window overlooking the cul-de-sac and meditate, or nap, or dream.

Almost daily I am meeting with and talking to people who love Jesus and see him waving Hope and a Future in their faces.

Often, I cry: sometimes with, usually without, reasonable explanation. At the insurance company. In my car. While playing the piano. When I read something beautiful.

Most days I avoid mounds of paperwork and pending phone conversations. I spend hours psyching myself up or out and then give up and bake cakes.

And all of this, all of this amounts to one thing: waiting. I am waiting.
I wish I could say I was waiting patiently on the Lord. I wish I could say I was being brave and courageous. Mostly I am just waiting. Actually, always, except for moments when I forget, I am waiting.

But today, I feel like enough is enough.

Injustice hounds me like a ravenous beast, devouring bits of hope and leaving a wake of despair. I see too much that is too much and I want to DO something already.

Today I hear that heartbeat again.

I heard it in the desperate plea for partners and people of compassion to unify to build transitional housing for addicts and their children. It was less than an hour later that I ran into a social worker who informed me that one of my girls is an addict herself, at the tender age of 13. After lunch, to pick up the tone, I went to a funeral for a man whose story and situation so closely echoed my dad's I felt like I was living an out-of-body experience. And for desert, la piece de resistance, I listened to a representative of International Justice Mission telling me about the millions, yes millions!, of children living and working in the sex trade.

How long, o lord, will you stand so far off?
Or, how long will you allow me to stand so far off?

Waiting.
Waiting.
Tiring of waiting.
Still waiting.

Tha-thump.
It drums on.

Tha-thump.
Tha-thump.
Tha-thump.

The heart beat is pumping, pumping, pumping.

Tha-thump.
Tha-thump.

I hear this beat, blood surging through every vein. It is quietly, gently, rhythmically calling me back.

George was here. In Saskatoon. All weekend. Need I say more?

George, the father of the Hands at Work family, has a way of making the story of injustice tangible. It hangs in the air like a moving picture. I can smell it. I can taste it. I can feel the warm breath of air on my cheek. If I just stretch out my hand I could brush those kids again. If I just knelt down I would be right back on the hard, red earth.

There is no place like home.
There's no place like home.
There's no place like home.

My chanting doesn't work. This is not a fairytale!

I am living in a mystery and it would seem that the joke is on me. The only one in the dark about my own life is me! What is the next step? I call over the :Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump! It's a fever pitch hammering in my ears! The tha-thump reminding me of His heart which beats for justice! The pounding drum of compassion drawing me into action. In moments of frustration I am screaming: WHAT!? What do you want me to do? I am willing!

But it's unclear. I calm down. Lulled by the beat.
Just the beat. The beat. Of justice. Propelling me deeper into the father's throne room. Deeper. Toward the surging waters of his justice. Deeper. Into the the very ventricles of his heart. Where a plan awaits. Deeper.

too dry, tonight

I stopped writing here thinking the abrupt end to my trip signified the abrupt end to this journey. I realize the journey persists in a way that this mystical space in time cannot limit. I am never at the end. I am never where I am going, even in the moments when I am still, but I am always on the way. My journey to Africa is not what I thought: neither noble nor meaningless; neither selfless nor selfish. It was the beginning to an entirely different journey that I did not realize I would embark on: Grief.
My homesickness for Africa is both irrational and palpable. How can six weeks in a person's life substitute the balance of 25 years for the safety it offered? Yet, somehow, it holds a power that is neither real nor imagined. I experienced something there that was real. But I could only bring home a piece of that reality and every day it loses a little more of its life.
Tonight, like many other nights in the past two months, I sit with nostalgia and memories. I am wishing senselessly for a return to the last week in Africa when I had not yet uncovered the truth which would then overshadow the next months perhaps years, of my life. Those weeks, those precious days, so far away, when my dad was still alive. And even though I wasn't with him, he still existed.
I miss him terribly tonight.
And I miss the way I never had to miss him when he was alive.
I miss the blissful ignorance of those days before his death when I didn't have to worry that he would soon be gone.
Yes, Africa was not about Africa, for me. Africa, was about me. Perhaps Africa just wasn't as fragile as I anticipated. Perhaps it is I who am fragile. I who must be handled with care. It seems I went to Africa to learn that God loves me so that I could come home and face Grief with companionship. It seems the good people of Africa showed the grace with which a person can accept suffering, the joy that avails to those who wait patiently on the Lord.
Presently I am living elsewhere. I am not in the world, per se, I am just witnessing it. I am playing my drum and reading the Word and falling asleep in the afternoon. I am baking cakes and crying and writing a book. I am eating and dreaming and hoping and laughing. And I'm not sure where this goes.
Suffice to say, I am never anywhere but always on the way.