I get to live here

(beautiful images found at Pictory as part of a wonderful photo journal, via Lydia Pierce's facebook wall)

Driving across the Bay Bridge yesterday I couldn't help but smile as I turned to Dan and asked if he thinks he will live here a long time.

We were on our way back from recruiting at a job fair. The view of the city and the water and all that is San Francisco had me wondering if I could ever leave. (Yes, for those of you who have read my blog for a long time, this is a declaration: the infatuation is back in full force. I have a huge crush on my city). The question prompted a series of questions about culture, justice, seeking to live a moral life in a city that takes liberty to the extreme, and the mix of it all. As we talked I remembered again that I think this city is amazing, and I feel so blessed to be here. I am growing here, I am learning here, I live here.

The ocean meets me at the half way point of a long run and it is just yards away from beautiful steep hills that scare me. The same shore is just miles from the high rise where I worked for a hot second as a development assistant for an amazing organization that gets money to low income housing projects and just a few miles from there is my current fabulous office where I work with amazing people serving low income youth. Spread across the city in about a dozen diverse neighborhoods are the people that are challenging me to live into community and faith. I want to know where else in the world are so many amazing opportunities stacked on top of each other and crammed together in such claustrophobic beauty? (confession, I have a list in my mind mostly all developing world...)

Tonight I am going to the opera with tickets purchased from a silent auction to raise money for an emergency shelter for women escaping trafficking; tomorrow I will be meeting with my tribe to debrief the vow year we just finished; a few weeks ago the summer season of free street fairs and performances began.

Today, I am just really grateful that I live here.