Today was an odd day or was it typical? I sometimes get overwhelmed with life here in D.C. By that, what do I mean? Well, for instance, I went out to grab a bite of lunch and decided to try a new place down the street called Pot Bellies. They make a really tasty sandwich and very yummy shakes and smoothies. However, getting the sandwich can be a rather trying experience. For starters, you stand in a wrap around line or queue. As you near station one, a guy yells out at you something like, "Maam, what can I get you?". They he yells at the next 5 people behind you. Lucky me, I'm a quick learner. Once I yelled my order back and got up front, I realized that if I wanted a smoothie that this was my opportunity to make that known. So the guy shouts my order down to the end of the food servers' line. Miraculously, after I pass through the sandwich making stations I get to the end of the line where I pay for my tuna on whole wheat and mention I ordered a smoothie. The clerk turns and comes back with my boysenberry smoothie. I give her my card and the transaction is complete. I've got my goods and I think I've got my sanity.

Do we really need to yell at each other? Is it really necessary to process as many people as possible as quickly as possible through the line? I guess that's business. But, it almost seems mechanical. Granted it was rather efficient, but it was loud and boisterous and I felt like cattle being herded by some cowboy, only without the hat and lasso. And, all this, despite the fact a live folk artist played her guitar in the background. I'm sure the restaurant is aware of the managed chaos that ensues every day and this live music is a way to calm the stressed out souls waiting in line. Because, after all, we only have a 45-minute lunch break. Well, here's just a thought for all you would-be restauranteers ... there is a dearth of food places in Southwest DC so open up a few more good ones! The photo is not DC, by the way, but New York City, the view from on top the German House, looking out over the East river and Queens.

Today was off for other reasons. Instead of stories of yet another suicide bomber in Iraq, Morroco, Algeria, or Afghanistan, today's tragic news that filled the airwaves in the States was that over 30 people (mainly young students) perished at Virginia Tech University at the hand of a young assassin. I immediately thought of my hair stylist Kim's daughter who is a freshman there. I hope and pray her young daughter is safe. What a horrible, horrible tragedy for the university, community, and country as a whole. Violence seems to be the top story no matter where you turn these days... world news, national news, local news. It's constantly in our faces. I expect tomorrow that I will wake up to NPR and hear about -- yes, you guessed it --yet more violence.

Last week I watched the movie "Blood Diamond" about the civil war in Sierra Leone, child soldiers, and conflict diamonds (literally blood diamonds). I was particularly struck by a profound couple of sentences the diamond smuggler Danny Archer speaks to the American journalist Maddie Bowen. Archer, in a moment of deep reflection on the continent of his birth and his life experiences, remarks "Sometimes I wonder if God will forgive us for the things we do to each other. But, then I think, God left this place a long time ago." Archer is referring to the violent conflict and mess that seems endemic to much of Africa, in this case the Sierra Leone civil war in 1999. I happened to discuss this with my friend Heather who pointed me to Corrie ten Boom's "The Hiding Place", the true story of about the ten Boom family and their efforts to safeguard and provide shelter to Jews in Nazi-occupied Holland. Heather reminded me of the words Betsie ten Boom spoke to her sister Corrie as they lay in lice-infested barracks in the concentration camp Ravensbruck: “There is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”