Thin Mints and yellow ribbons

Today and yesterday I've been driving around hunting down Girl Scout cookies. This proved to be more of an adventure than I realized. First they weren't at the Kroger where they were supposed to be, then at the next Kroger they didn't take checks, and when I came back with cash they were out of Thin Mints and sent me back to the first Kroger. This wild goose chase for Thin Mints was a little frustrating, but I was getting them to send to Jen, one of my good friends from high school who's in the army in Afghanistan now. So my scavenger hunt made me feel kind of patriotic, too.

That was different. I've never really been a support-the-troops, magnetic-yellow-ribbon-on-car kind of girl. I'm mostly a pacifist. And no, I won't try to defend that on political grounds; all I mean is that military activity makes me morally uncomfortable. That doesn't make me hesitant to send cookies to a friend overseas or anything, but the cookie hunting has made me think about war and military and all that good stuff over the past few days.

Jen seems happy. Her last email talked about how the food in the chow hall was really good, and how her job was going to include buying donkeys and chickens from the locals. I can't imagine being happy doing what she does. But I'm glad she is. If I'm honest, I know I can also find moral ambiguity in my own sense of call--like my decision to be ordained into a church that doesn't support the full inclusion of homosexuals, a moral stance I disagree with. I guess it all goes to show how different our callings are and how we try our best to fulfill them in an imperfect world.