one week from today...

One week from today I'll be in the air, probably just about to cross over into Europe, or still over water. Our flight leaves from Dulles, International. From there, after a brief fueling stop in Rome, I'll join a medical team with members from New York City, Tulsa, Birmingham and Columbia, South America. The Columbian Doc actually lives in Miami, but I'm not sure if she's a U.S. citizen so we might as well make this team international. I'm travelling with another film maker, Dan Gerding, a 26-year-old talent from my home of 15 years, Baltimore.

Rev. Paul Warren, team leader and pastor recommended we read Tracy Kidder's MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS in preparation for the trip. The story catalogues a Harvard Doc's work among the poor in Haiti. 20 pages in I responded somewhat emotionally, feeling as though I could easily be swept back in to that "life on the edge."

The easiest way for me to describe the past two years of my life would be to say that I "have not been living in Sandtown." Sandtown is most "correctly" described as a distressed urban community. Our last 13 years rounded out 20 of what for our family was a "call" to live and work in a community development setting. One doesn't just leave a call like this. One must be released. Two years ago I was released to pursue other opportunities.

Reading Kidder's book I felt more like a recent escapee... Like one who has labored to get back to shore from particularly rough surf, still lying on the sand, but not out of reach of the biggest waves. I started wondering if this trip to Ethiopia would be the big wave that picks me up and drags me back in...

Sort of a sad way to look back on a call, a ministry. I think I trust God more than that. But we are frail and selfish, and I have enjoyed these two years, and the absence of those things which used to define me: poor, inner city, pastor. I have been prospered - and I do mean that in the passive voice. We have been lying down in green pastures, my family and I. But the lingering pathologies (or is it Christian conviction?) of 20 years of community development leave me yet uncomfortable with my relative wealth. So we'll see.

I'm quite certain God has his own reasons for my being on this trip. Our immediate assignment, though, is to tell the story of an HIV/AIDS mission working in the Lideta and Bolle communities of Addis. We've done what pre-production we can, have auditioned our gear and rehearsed what and how we'll carry it.

We leave in a week.