Play For Hope

 So, much has happened in my life since my last blog and I will be slowly outlining the gist of the lessons learned from those experiences as I begin again.  But, most importantly, I am heading to Rwanda again in a few days.  People ask me if I am excited and I try to say yes, but there is a new feeling that I have a hard time describing.  It isn’t like it used to be.  When I go to Rwanda now, it feels like I am a man in search of purpose and living purpose at the same time.  I get excited about that like I get excited for just living every day.  It isn’t exotic or romantic anymore, but it is beautiful.  It isn’t life changing as much as it is life giving.  At some point, these trips to Africa just became deep and powerful, but not what everyone around me was experiencing.  They weren’t new anymore.  

    Probably the most amazing thing I experience now when I travel to Africa is how distinctly similar Africa feels to America.  There is poverty in both places, pain in both places, joy in both places, and love in both places.  It just depends on the lens I use to see my environment.  People in seek of purpose, in America, have to navigate the noise of our culture’s emotional and spiritual poverty.  In Africa, they have to navigate the noise of physical poverty...the demands that daily survival places on a person.  As an American in Rwanda, I get to live without the daily waking need for food and water, plus I can wake to the sound of roosters and the smell of cooking fires as opposed to my alarm clock and the coffee pot.  It is a luxury for two weeks and when I am there, I try not to waste it.  I try to live every moment in the moment.  Being present becomes the priority.  But, as the bard says, “therein lies the rub”.  (-:

Stay tuned....