–Before the thunderstorm–
Almost every time I check the news, there are photos and video footage of natural disasters such as tornadoes, blizzards, and fires. A few days ago was the one year anniversary of the major earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that rocked Japan and stunned millions worldwide who watched video in disbelief. Two quakes of fairly significant severity struck there today.
Other disasters are harder to understand because we may never know why they happened. A bus carrying skiers home from holiday in Switzerland crashed in a tunnel, killing more than 20 people, the vast majority children ages 11-12 years old.
And there are storms completely beyond understanding, the ones we wreak on one another. Shootings of civilians by soldiers who were supposed to protect them, a gun brought to school by a child and used to shoot other children, verbal and physical abuse from the quiet of slaps in homes to the thunder of explosions on city streets.
Today is another day of storms. Many are invisible: They are waged within, a fight to get out of bed despite depression, the struggle to stay firm against a teenager who will not accept No for an answer, the daily decision to love and care for an indifferent stranger who was once our parent or grandparent before disease robbed them of their mind and personality.
Storms come, destroy, and eventually leave. Despite the storms of millennia, the Earth still turns, people still show kindnesses to strangers, adults smile at children and animals. Children often smile for no reason at all … at least not one apparent to adults.
The only way to live with nothing to lose is to live with nothing. That is a cost I cannot accept because life is in the bonds we have with one another. A year ago I saw it in the faces of an elderly Japanese couple who wandered through the site of what had been their home, recognizing almost nothing, only to burst into smiles that the cameraman caught –smiles on seeing their dog come to them out of rubble piles several stories high.
Remember, although there have been storms, external and internal, for millennia….. these things abide, faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.
–Sunset after the storm–