enough time.

In a few hours, I will have hit my one week anniversary.

So many people live a life scattered with the statement, "there just isn't enough time!" or "I wish I could add more hours to my day!".

My days here are filled with time. I cannot accurately make that statement. During the seasons of my life when I could, there were always things I said I would do if, in fact, I had more time. I would cook more, which I have been doing a little since being here. I would run more. I just finished a thirty minute run. And I would read more. Today, I finished reading, "Things Fall Apart," by Chinua Achebe. It's an appropriate read, delving into the history and tradition of cultures, and what happens when cultures overlap, and sometimes clash. It talks about the arrogance of the people that see one way of doing things, and haphazardly and carelessly crush those traditions that they don't understand, and are a little afraid of.

When I am home, the culture of my house is open. We are welcomers of all kinds of people. We like to create space for people to be themselves. We like find reasons to gather people together. My favorite passage in this book hit on this idea, and its importance. In the book, an elder is making the statement to one of the younger men in the tribe, encouraging him to keep this custom alive.

"A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it on his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so."

My entire family is at my house right now, including my brothers and their children. On Sunday my mom had everyone important, their kinsmen, over to the house to celebrate my brother being home, and his twenty-eighth birthday. I could not make it, as the trip would have been a little inconvenient. But even though I was not there, I find great joy in the fact that the people in my life make time to come together, because it is good to do so.