PARIS, FRANCE? . . .

Despite the fact that I am in red plaid flannel pajamas, with Bob on my lap, my hair up in a haphazard ponytail, a Crate&Barrel mug of decaffeinated coffee on my side table, and the Yankee game blaring in front of me, I feel strangely cultured and sophisticated.

It's the beautiful violin playing seeping across the hall, crawling under my door and entering with graceful fluidity into my ears.

I don't know who it is. I've heard that an older woman lives there with her high-school aged son (another son away at college). Is it he who is practicing for an upcoming concert? Is it she who is honing a hobby?

It's so lovely ...

***

WHAT SHE REALLY WANTS . . .

A productive dinner and extended coffee meeting with PEK tonight, and still so much was left unsaid. NHF needs so much, it can be so much, it can do so much ... and the question was unasked, but if PEK had asked me what, at the start of 2005, do I want to do at NHF, I would have said ...

... I want to galvanize people into action. I want to cause people to look away from themselves and to look outward, into their communities, their neighborhoods, their cities and states, and their political systems. I want people to come with me to hold crack-addicted babies needing a human touch at Westchester Medical Center; build houses with Habitat for Humanity; run or walk two 5k cancer fundraiser races a year; do the Loaves & Fish ministry more often than merely once every six weeks; and deliver meals to homebound and ill neighbors. I want to open people's eyes to the fact that being a believer doesn't mean insulating oneself among other believers. I want to make people realize that we have an even greater duty to vote, to serve, to be proactive in our communities. I want us, me, to stop being comfortable and being thrilled with how comfortable we are. I want us, me, to stop being so boring and stupidly pleased with how boring we are. I want us, me, to stop talking about our lofty faith and start DOING AS CHRIST DID. I want us to be what we are, and I want the community around us to always, ALWAYS, know that we are there, doors open, arms outstretched, to accept, to serve, to give, to help, to listen, to befriend.

THAT is what I want. And if no one else is going to do it ... sigh, I might have to do it myself. PEK said I could, so there! (Actually, he said I have a knack for "mobilizing people into activity" and that my organizational skills were "excellent, and much needed," but I think that was diplomatic code for "you're good at bullying people into doing things" and "you are so much more ridiculously anal than anyone else at church." Whatever. I'll take it and run with it ...)