Music is my boyfriend...part numpa.

Mer, you wrote one blog post about CDs, do you really need to write a second?

Yes.  Yes, I do.

Part numpa (two) of the music series is a reflection on a recent mixed CD, made for me by my dear friend Alex.  He made me a stack of CDs to "get me through the drive" from Chicago-Pennsylvania-Chicago-Minnesota-South Dakota when I moved out here to start internship.  He titled them with some clever titles, referencing the long drive, such as, "Are we there yet?"  He made one that he titled "One hour to go" and instructed me that I wasn't allowed to listen to it until I was an hour away from Pine Ridge.

The anticipation killed me as I headed west.  I desperately wanted to know what was on that CD.  I popped it in the other day as I was driving back to Pine Ridge from a meeting.  The song that played as I pulled into town was Adele's "Hometown Glory."  To be clear, I did listen to it when I was an hour away from Pine Ridge.  Don't worry, Alex, I followed your instructions.

I've heard Adele say that she wrote the song to honor her hometown of London.  I've never spent time in London, aside from a layover, but I think the idea of pride or love for the place you come from is important.

As I spend more time at Pine Ridge, I find myself figuring out what it means to call this place "home" for a year, knowing that it is finite.  I will leave in August of 2013, regardless of how much I fall in love with it here or how much I hate it here.  Driving back into town, listening to Adele serenade me with "Hometown Glory," I realized that Pine Ridge has become home.  When I'm in Sioux Falls, Pine Ridge is home.  When I'm in Oglala, Pine Ridge is home.  When I'm in Rapid City, Pine Ridge is home.  And while I'm not completely sure what "home" means right now, I'm appreciative of Adele's words from the first stanza:

No, and thank you, please madam, I ain't lost, just wandering.

I'm not lost, I just keep wandering, moving from place to place, going where I can learn and try and be challenged by what God has created in this world and what we have destroyed in this world.