I just got back from the Friends Meeting. I've started going to the Young Friends in the basement, which is basically youth group, and I like it a lot. Last time I was there we were talking about the nature of truth and if or when it was okay to be untruthful. Today a lot of college people who were in town for Christmas came back, and one of them was telling us about what he's doing in Philadelphia. He's very active in the movement against a war in Iraq, and it was amazing to sit there and listen to him speak. He was saying he'd had good relations with the police so far, but that he was going to be doing a lot of protesting in the coming months and would quite probably be arrested. I'd always respected civil rights protesters who got arrested for their causes, but it was so much more immediate to hear it coming from a man sitting six feet away from me.

Partly because I realized that I was likely to be in exactly his shoes in a few years. I haven't ever done any protesting, but maybe once I'm in college I'll do more. And actually, I can see myself staying somewhere like Pendle Hill or some sort of collective, at least for a while. I don't think it had really occurred to me until this year that social justice wasn't just something you talked about in government class, it was something you could make, actions you could take. That's part of why I really want to go to Swarthmore, because they've got such an emphasis on social justice. And I don't want to just study it in the books - I want to make a tangible difference, whether it's lobbying or working at the YWCA or teaching kids to speak English. There are so many problems I see all the time that I can't see any better way to spend my life than trying to fix them. And I want me to be happy too, of course, but I think loving other people and being happy is just one more way to improve your surroundings.

So that was my morning. Sometimes I wish every day were a Sunday.

December 20