March 12, 2004 – My morning at work was occupied mostly by a meeting with someone from a packaging equipment manufacturer. He was very casual and spent most of the meeting talking about his company and their core values rather than talking about the equipment. I was impressed with their headquarters and work ethic, but I would have liked to focus in more on the numbers than on the fact that they have meetings every day at 7:45 to start the day. Lunch included a filet-o-fish at McDonalds with a few friends from work. I left work at 4 PM today so I could pack up for my church music retreat. We met in Adams County off of Route 32 in central-southern Ohio at a place called Murphin Ridge Inn. Normally this place functions as a bed and breakfast, but we are using it this weekend for our gathering space to discuss things. The drive was not that fun, since I’ve driven 32 several times, usually towards Athens, Ohio. I didn’t have any expectations for this retreat, since I didn’t know anything about the events. I think my lack of expectation was a good thing. Everyone else had been to this retreat before (it’s been going on for like 17 years, with most members there for all of them), and I heard that this one was much more unstructured in the past. The lack of structure was fine with me. One thing that we got from the leader (Father Al from church) was an excerpt from the Bible. It was about how the Apostles came to Jesus and told him about all the things they had done, and Jesus told them to go away to another place and rest for a while “for they did not even have time to eat”. At first I thought about myself being an Apostle, teaching others with the music I play at church. Then I thought about who my teachers *were*, and all the obvious stuff came to mind, like my parents, school teachers, more senior people at work, etc. It wasn’t until I thought about that last line, about eating, that I realized that even the Apostles needed to eat, or learn, despite being the ones doing the teaching. I tried thinking of everyone I knew and tried to figure out if they teach me or I teach them. I thought about those would be considered the lowest of people based on social standards, and first I thought of Wayne. Wayne is the ‘homeless’ black man in his 50’s that first started knocking on my door about 6 years ago, begging for money. Eventually we became friends and played racquetball together, and talked about all sorts of things. He taught me a lot about looking past what others see superficially and look into a person to find their worth. Wayne had so much to give, if only he would be given a good opportunity to succeed. Then I thought about the homeless guys that stand on the side of the road, and how they teach me. They teach me to respect my good fortune and the opportunities I was given because of how I grew up, and they teach me that society doesn’t treat everyone equally. I also feel somewhat called to help these people out, but in a way that surpasses handing out money to them. I wrote down the word opportunity, and then underlined it. There were many questions that I wrote down that I’ll have to go back and review later to answer. The night ended with a fun game of Euchre and then a too-long game of Chinese checkers.