The Spirit Within the Tsunami

One can't keep a blog without touching on what's happening in Japan.  Japan is surely touching back.  Images etched in the mind.  The cries firmly planted in the heart.  An earthquake as a singular disaster is plenty earth-shattering enough.  No pun intended.  A tsunami in and of itself -- an event of catastrophic proportions.  But the coupling of two such phenomena, levied upon a nation not moored to a continental land mass, an island unto itself, dense with humanity, almost defies comprehension.  Almost.

I say almost because, as Michelle Kosinski of NBC news so practically and profoundly stated during a story on The Today Show this morning, "that is the power of nature . . . and it has to be believeable to us . . . especially since we as humans are drawn to live, by the millions, right along the edges of oceans and fault lines."  She was referring to a dramatic video footage montage culled from online posts shot by firsthand witnesses.  Images of city streets rapidly filling with debris-strewn rising waters.  People stranded on bridges as avenues transform into rivers: many of them separated from danger by only the merest of inches and feet.  The suddenness of nature, the way in which what is -- especially those things created by the hands of men -- violently and abruptly becomes what was, stupefies the mind.  Our ability to absorb such a wide scope of instant and permanent change stretches to the breaking point.  But we must remain elastic in our acceptance.

Whether it be thunderstorms, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, or volcanoes, that fact that humanity is not alone on this spinning planet of natural forces can not, and should not, be denied.  Forgotten.  Pushed to the back of the shelf.  To do so reeks of recklessness, ignorance, and folly.  To do do means we turn our backs on the facts of history and expect the present to perform differently than it will, than it should.  For all of our planning and emergency drills and rescue practices, most people selfishly harbor at their core a fantasy belief that it won't happen to them.  This is the simplest of ironies, as such thoughts are at once a personal safety mechanism which allows each of us to continue our lives, surrounded by our possessions and trappings, AND a guarantee that we will be rocked when, and if, aforementioned items are ripped from our lives.  But we seem to be nothing if not conundrums.

The still picture in my mind, that lasting image of a tragedy which finds a way to permanently imprint on the psyche for the remainder of ones life as a reminder of a powerful moment, comes from one of those shaky cell phone videos I saw on my television early this morning.  A torrent of onrushing ocean invading homes and tall buildings fills the screen before cutting to a mother and daughter in the midst of a larger group of people huddled atop a bridge.  Sounds of car alarms and splitting trees mingle with the whoosh of the upsurge, with the shouts of citizens helpless to do anything.  All of it is a crazy cocktail of catastrophe.  Suddenly, the daughter, a girl of perhaps nine or ten, screams in fear.  Her tight round face, her pink jacket, her abject confusion, they punch me in my gut.  In a movement more hurried than the approach of the surging sea below her, the mother grabs her child, covering the girl's ears and pulling the girl's head into the safety of her belly.  As if her daughter could again be that innocent and protected baby, enveloped in the soothing waters of amniotic fluid, afloat in a non-hostile environment, far from this brutal reality.  The moment passes within the frame of a heartbeat.

But the mother within me continues to press the sweet face of that scared little girl into the comfort of my own womb though it alters nothing. I understand that what she has witnessed will shape her perceptions and mold her years with an awareness and purpose which can possibly improve lives and benefit her country and our world.  She has glimpsed the face of that which is real and true, stripped of all ornamentation and deception.  The validity of life, raw and unedited, has crashed into her world and all will be different.  Hopefully, all will be better.  Like those of us who share in her shock and sorrow, mourn her losses, rejoice in her survival, and choose to believe in the powers beyond our ken, she will rebuild with her eyes wide open.

In the final analysis, that is the key.  Everything we own, hold dear, love, value, and cherish, can be shaken from our grip, washed from our homes, swooped up and away from sight, but the physical realm is a solid.  And a solid can not strip us of our spirit.  We can own other belongings, develop love and affection for other people, attach value to new bank accounts.  We can even reinvent ourselves if need be.  Nonetheless, the spirit of every man, woman, and child, subsists above and beyond the fray.  It need not be contained or crushed, harnessed or hammered.  Feed it.  Trust it.  Grow it.  Allow it the freedom to expand beyond the borders we insist upon erecting in the face of natural and supernatural forces.  Then, our shock can surrender to acceptance, and surviving will step aside for thriving.

No active fault line or wall of angry water can take that away from any of us.  Unless we let it.

  

The Beauty of Self Part 1

I find beauty in almost all things.  In most people -- internal and external.  In nature -- from the broad palette of the sky overhead to the minutest of flora and fauna crawling and sprawling across the surface of the earth.  What others might overlook, a beetle intent upon hauling his newly discovered cache of discarded food or dropped animal waste, I catch and catalog in my memory banks, awed by the effort of one so small and common, incredulous as I contemplate the tiny but significant corner that this one creation fills with circle-of-life importance.  The melodic strains of a violin composition buried within the larger soundtrack of a film, the emotional movement of string across string, capable of playfulness, passion, the stirring of feelings thought long dormant.  A worn woman of indeterminate age whose youthful vitality has long since waned while her contemplation of youth itself remains a shadowy figure in a mind and body once wholly associated with active synaptic connections and ease of jointed motion.

The symphony of beauty inherent in daily life, that which surrounds us all whether we choose to bear it witness or not, comforts me.  Consciously.  Sub-consciously.  I am most grateful to its longstanding presence.  It moves me to prayer and connects me to the whole.  It evokes deep wells of gratitude within me which resonate from my core and ripple outward to crest upon the banks of everything and everyone around me.  Beauty exists as the jewels in the crown of my life.  The grace of Jesus sits as the center stone, the most precious of carbonized and faceted gems.  My husband and children, emeralds.  My siblings, rubies.  And the multi-hued brilliance of friends catch the light with topaz, lapis, amethyst, and turquoise.  A setting in precious metals, platinum, gold, silver, reflects art in its myriad forms, those found in nature and those formed by the hands of human kind.  From the time I could walk and talk, cognizant of the elemental world in whose folds I was coddled, I was mindful of the simplicity, and the elusiveness, of beauty abounding everywhere.

Everywhere, that is, but in me.

Though to pinpoint the exact moment I withdrew myself from the loop, when my personal discernment withered on the vine, is not possible, my earliest memories are of a girl caught up in judging herself, criticizing her form, berating her thought processes . . . holding herself up to the harsh light of compare and contrast and finding herself most wanting.  I can assure you it is no way to live a life.  The process, one of exhaustion in the emotional and physical realms, weakens the spirit and hinders the soul in its spiritual quest.  And, really, my ability to extend myself, to help and give and love as I believe I was created to do, has been diluted.  Thus, whatever true and lovely imprint I am intended to disperse to awaiting recipients in my sphere of influence prevails at half-strength.  And that simply will not do any longer.

That bit of personal revelation doubtless comes as no surprise to those people closest to me.  Loved ones who express their concern judiciously.  Confidants who assure me that which I presently can not see yet lives within me.  A husband who shores me up with humor and affection and patience.  Children who encourage as only my own babies ever could.  It is all for the good.  It does not land on deaf ears or settle into a cold heart.  But the plowed fields of self yield as crops planted and watered, weeded and mulched, but never fertilized.  It's time to increase production.

In that vein, the month-mark is right around the corner: my 28 days of dutifully swallowing a tiny pale pink pill.  Last night I called in my prescription refill.  My brain chemistry has mellowed.  The anti-depressant is working.  Within the first week, I sensed a shift, beyond the medication-induced fatigue which encouraged a few extended afternoon naps, beyond the initial possibility of placebo-effect.  At week two, I knew beyond a shadow of doubt (in my experience, doubt often presents with more presence than that of a peripheral mist) that a positive change had taken hold of me.  I was still me, still Gloria, but less intense, a bit more relaxed.  The speeding train of endless thoughts had slowed down.  The urge to cry and shout in recurring bouts of frustration, sorrow, anger, and irritation?  Decreased significantly if not all together.  But my humor remained intact.  My ability to sense God in my life, to bend my spirit to supplication -- all still there.  Able to be accessed with more ease, in fact.  Each of these things are, taken one at a time or consumed as one giant horse pill, answers to a lifetime of seeking and prayer.  My decision to go down this road can be chalked up as an emerging victory.

That is a beautiful thing.