This is a repost from my teammate Joe's blog. Read Part 1 or Part 2.
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We've relocated. We only have an hour left and we need to get dinner. We drove just a few miles down the highway to Five Guys, a burger chain. I don't think we have these in California. To save money we share two large fries, but they're way too much.
"Music plays a big part of my life," says Lauren. "I'm very artsy." She wears a charm necklace with a heart, a cross, and a Sigma Phi Lamda charm. Sororities, too, are very important to Texans apparently.
"I have a heart for Africa," she says. "That's what I thought I was going to do for a while, either grad school for Art History or CulinarySchool or go to Africa. I went to Zambia last summer. I thought that was where God was going to lead me."
Later we talk about pet peeves. We laugh when Tamica starts, "Mine is when people interrupt when…" but then someone says, "Like when everyone starts talking at once." It's so absurd I put my head down and crack up.
Is that funny? Maybe you had to be there. Maybe you have to be family to laugh like that with us.
We talk about silly things, like movies we can't live 11 months without. We talk about things that upset us, like how Heather is an includer and gets uncomfortable when someone gets left out. We talk about deep things.
Tamica says, "I've never felt like a good leader. This is new territory for me. I'm going to need a lot of encouragement." Everyone leans in as she talks, faces apt and encouraging. Lauren gives her doe eyes, full of a cheerleader's support.
"Let's make a covenant today," says Tamica. "Let's make a covenant to always be open and honest and direct with each other." Heads nod in agreement. We already have been honest together, even with our negativity, our fears, the things which upset us. "Let's promise to always go directly to the person you're having conflict with, and especially, to build up and encourage each other."
We put our hands into the middle, fourteen hands in a big ball like a planet, maybe even like that little ball of super-condensed matter the big-bangers believe initiated the universe. We pray, all our hands gathered in the middle, full of that same energy which set in motion time as we know it, full of dreams of snow-white spider mums and family. Dez, with a content little smile, leans her head on Stacy's shoulder.
Amen. The hands burst into activity, clearing the food, throwing trash in the bin which someone holds open. We leave.
The clouds are higher here in Georgia than they are in California, as if the moisture condenses into cloud at a higher elevation. I ask Matt if he knows why that is. He says he doesn't, but that he would ask his friend who is a meteorological buff.
They are higher here and taller. It makes the world feel more spacious, as if the sky were making room for our dreams, room for new realities. I want this. I want you, God, in them. We will be like interlocking fingers, like a couple interlocking hands, walking down a dirt path with a spacious blue sky over their heads, like a couple under that tall tall sky, a sky as tall as my dreams.
