(This was written this past Saturday while I ws still in Florida with my students, but due to limited internet access while we were there, I'm just now posting it....)
It’s been a few days since I’ve blogged—I’ve been working. (Well, if you consider being in Florida on spring break with college students work…!) Six of my PCM students and I drove down to Sarasota, Florida on Wednesday for an alternative spring break. Thursday we visited Beth-el Farmworkers Ministry in Wimauma, near Bradenton, where we did a good bit of volunteering—cleaning a patch of heavy brush from a soon-to-be parking lot, dividing several fifty-pound bags of flour into 2 ½ pound bags for distribution in their food pantry, and sorting through bags and bags of clothes for their clothes closet. Friday we drove to Immokalee, a little town near Naples, where we toured and learned about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and their struggle for better working conditions for Florida’s migrant workers. Finally, we spent the better part of Saturday at Siesta Key Beach, enjoyed a sunset at Turtle Beach, and ended our third and final day, our day of rest and play, at Phillipi Creek Oyster Bar and Restaurant for a great meal. It’s been a wonderful few days—a perfect balance of work, play, worship, education, and fellowship. Fun times.
It’s been hard for me to be here, though, in several ways. Being back on the coast makes me realize that my heart still aches for Costa Rica. For the beauty of God’s creation there, for its simplicity, and its freedom from distractions and superficiality. Joel took us back there briefly in his sermon last week, and just the vivid memory of it literally brought me to tears.
Then today, on the way home from the beach, I pulled out an old cassette tape from my college days. The van we’re traveling in only has a cassette player, so I brought along my old cassette case and have pulled out a few here and there. I don’t know what prompted me to pop Steve Winwood in the player, but I did, and as he sung “Back in the High Life” and “Finer Things,” I was immediately transported back to my own college days--the rich promises that felt so alive for me when I was that age, and friendships with which I was so blessed. It was almost more than I could take when we traded Steve Winwood for the soundtrack from Dirty Dancing and “I’ve Had the Time of My Life.” Wow. (Sidenote: Even Patrick Swayze has cancer—pancreatic. Damn that cancer…) As I look back on those days, I realize that life was so much simpler then. And a part of me misses them terribly right now. The complexity of my own life these past few months, and my spending the past four days, 24/7, with my Emory students makes me long for those times again.
But there’s no going back, is there? And if we could, would we truly want to? More later...
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