Cologne, Germany.

"Soooooo much TROUUUUble in the worrrrrld!"

I never once thought when I was hearing Damian Jr. Gong Marley sing these lyrics to one of his father's most powerful songs this past weekend that I would return to civilization and read about the buildup to war in Lebanon.

At SummerJam, a three-day reggae festival on a man-made island in Cologne, newspaper headlines arent able to bring you down to the reality of the world we live in. You live in a tent, D.A.R.E.ing one another to Just Say No (to showers), all the while faced with incredibly tough decisions on a daily basis: which band is better, the one playing on the Green Stage, or the one jamming out on the Red Stage? You're surrounded by clouds of ganja smoke, conscious lyrics and hopeful messages: diatribes against the Babylon system; warnings of war in the east, war in the west, war up north, war down south; exhortations to peace and exhortations to the deliverance of justice that must precede peace.

But you never for one second stop to think that maybe those abstract ideas are going to morph into the concrete, so close to "Zion"... not while you're away for three short days, at least. Then, you see the first newspaper headline staring you in the eyes from the kiosk rack at Amsteradamer Strauße station. It's in Turkish, but it says everything with pictures and cognates -- there's a little bit of a situation in south Lebanon.

So my post-festival high has been pretty much stamped out, as I have spent the last 6 hours of my waking moments reading the litany of articles my dad mailed to me during the past three days, a 72-hour period that I was fortunate enough to remain in blissful ignorance.

SummerJam was amazing. But now it's back to Babylon. Let's all pray this thing doesn't spread into Syria. And if it does, let's just pray that those two kidnapped Israeli soldiers don't become answers to a trivia question about what sparked WW3.