skewed vision

a turtle is naked without its shell. a veil lifted, a mystery revealed. there are so many veils to lift, so many truths to unfold. sometimes i still wish i had that shell, other times, the bareness is what i need to keep moving.

our last day in the nature center. and everyone is sound asleep. no more tents, or thunderstorms pounding on tents, or birds waking us up at 5:30 am, or planting trees in 93 degrees. none of that. just a night in the nature center, a half day of work, and a trip back to the point. and then neeeeew york. our traveling continues, and i continue to peer through that tainted glass, making sense of my skewed vision.

today emily and i had our second CAP event of our round 2 spike. if i haven't explained earlier, all our team members have a specialty role or two that they do outside of the work day to help the team and Americorps progress. The CAP representatives are the people who reach out to the surrounding community to let them know what Americorps is all about. today's event was at an entrepreneur school for poverty-stricken and special-ed students. what we attended was a last-day-of-school cook-out. what we also attended was a lifted veil.

"how many of you have known someone who's in jail?" the lady with the mic asked. it was an interesting question. and more interesting was the murmur i heard to my side, "who wouldn't raise their hand to this question?" well, maybe me. but i know im just a turtle, turtles dont count. these students were part of a school system that supported peer on peer counseling. they had programs like a "step dance instead of violence" class that helped the students stay out of trouble and graduate. they were so full of life and inspiring to me. the way they danced, smiled, and joked. i felt like i was in a world that i have never known. a world full of people with completely different lives then what i've been raised around.

i don't know where this is taking me now, but i know im exactly where i should be. i know that moments like these are timeless. i know that even if we only got nine students to sign that paper of ours to join Americorps, i was going to do something like this. something to make a room full of people who know someone in jail, smile genuinely and dance in bliss. if nothing else, i'd at least like that on my bucket list.