"Abdul Play"

I recently visited a cabin in north Georgia with Sara and friends from my graduate school program. The ten of us planned to meet at the house in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

On the way up there Friday night, Sara and I hit some traffic and ended up stopping for groceries after the sun went down. With the week's stress behind us physically, I decided to sit right there in the Food Lion parking lot and meditate. Basically I wanted to rest, and start the weekend relaxed.

Within those couple of minutes, of course several cars drove by. One truck even parked directly in front of us, shining headlights on our probably-odd-looking practice of consciously resting inside the car. And as my thoughts wandered around my day and week, words and sensations started increasing their pace. I briefly felt my legs where they were. And then it happened: 

The words (that I can transliterate as) ABD-ALTAL3AB popped into my head. And before leaving them alone, I questioned where these came from. Why would I would think  those words? Taken together, this roughly means SLAVE OF PLAY... someone who is dedicated to playing. I immediately connected the thought to my ambition to volunteer more seriously with Ultimate Peace in 2014. 

What was really odd about the thought in that moment was that I had never heard this phrase before. Its actually improper Arabic - but the meaning gets across. The second part combines the verb TO PLAY with an article that only accompanies nouns. 

And even crazier that, here on my blog, my most recent post was from last summer at Ultimate Peace camp - and about fun!