I have used other blog sites in the past but got discouraged.  Still, I cannot quite get the desire to write out of my system so…here goes.

 We live in an exciting time.  Our world is both getting smaller and getting larger.  I can communicate with someone half way around the world easier than I can with my neighbor.  As a result I can feel both frightened and isolated.  Frightened because I do not understand much of the world.  When I was growing up I knew my neighbors.  I did not have visual access to war and starvation.  I felt safe.  Today I do not feel safe and yet in many ways, as an American, I am safer than the rest of the world in which I live.  Still, my lack of understanding coupled with my actual safety stirs something in me, a voice that whispers, “Pull back the curtains.” 

I feel isolated because as a child I knew my neighbors, or at least all the ones who had children my age, but as an adult I have not taken the time to run across the street to play.  Instead I stay in my house, or drive somewhere in my car, or sit on my back porch staring at my fenced in yard.  At the same time I am drawn into a global struggle every time I turn on the news or surf the web.  My self imposed isolation coupled with a growing awareness that starvation and war are real stirs something inside me, a voice that whispers, “Open the door.”

I am getting old, well middle aged at any rate.  But, I want to go outside and play.  I want to know my neighbors again.  I want to understand, much more than I do at this moment, that I have neighbors who live half way around the world. 

Today, when I get off work at 9:00AM, I am going to work at the foodbank for the first time in my life.  I am not sure what I expect.  I have been on the otherside of the foodbank equation a time or two in my life so in some ways I am not doing anything new or earth shattering.  Still, I think I have a different set of eyes in my head.  At least, I hope I do.