Home Again

I've hardly posted anything all summer except for poems, and since school is about to start again it's probably time to get back to real blogging. I had such a wonderful summer in the US, hardly thinking at all about my "real life": Haiti and my job. But on Friday we flew back, arriving with five of our eight pieces of luggage - perhaps a good metaphor for the way my heart wasn't all the way here yet. A couple of days back home have helped (and yes, the rest of the luggage arrived too), and I'm ready to start meetings tomorrow and to get my room prepared for school.

Rolling Stone Magazine published this article about the situation in Haiti right now. It's profoundly depressing reading, but sadly accurate. Next week it will be nineteen months since the earthquake. Much good work has been done, but in a piecemeal way that hasn't moved the country as a whole forward.

It feels wrong to draw in, to focus on my own little corner of the world, but that's what I end up doing because the big picture is so overwhelming. There are a few people whose lives I can help improve, and that has to be enough. I recently read this meditation, "Blessed Are Those Who Mourn," and it reminded me that even when I can't do anything about what's going on around me, there is benefit to caring about it and not shutting down. I try to find that balance. Tara put the dilemma beautifully in this post.

Meanwhile, I'm mustering up excitement about the new school year, looking at class lists, gathering up the books I bought in the US, thinking about first days. It's not glamorous, teaching twelve- to fourteen-year-olds, but this is why I'm here.