Food, thought and just sittin.

I started writing this post a few nights ago....and I'm going to finish it now! :-)

A few nights ago, for our community night, we watched Food, Inc., a very hard-to-watch, important documentary which I would encourage everyone to watch. (If you were moved by An Inconvenient Truth, which now I want to re-watch, this movie was made by some of the same people who made that movie as well.)

Afterwards we had a long conversation about changing the world. The "take-away" message that I was still thinking about a lot the morning after is that it is important to think about how we got to be doing why we're doing. What systems are the organizations, corporations or agencies that we work for built on? In non-profit land, is it a good thing when the numbers of people we're helping eat or pay their bills or get clothes are going up? (Think about it...)

I think education, empowerment and respect are as important as charity.

So that was last week, and today I had a wonderful day at work, planning for the after-school program that I'm going to start running at Grace 3 days a week (starting in October). It was cold and misty and rainy and foggy all weekend, so naturally today it was sunny and hot and then VERY nice tonight. I took a piece of cake, a glass of water and my journal to our porch steps and spent some time just sitting.

I want my still-at-Oberlin Obies to know that life after the madness does exist. Someone who graduated in 2009 told me in May that he felt like he had a fifth year in his head, and I'm feeling that. I had plenty on my mind as I was just sittin'...but still, I was able to BE in the sit. And it didn't feel bad. For once, the "I should be doing something" feeling was under control...because I was doing something. I was sitting on my porch eating cake.