Ruminations

As Virginians mourn and sit in shocked silence, North Easterners are having their lives turned into flotsam. Thailand, too, is flooding, and our new pope turns eighty.

Does anyone else out there remember Malachi? Has anyone else read Revelations?

I am in that blessed spot on the continent, where fires may rage come summer drought, but floods are few and far. Shooting sprees are typically kept on the news, and not in our own back yards. No wonder so many people are moving here, where life, to urban dwellers, must still seem charmed.

The world is changing faster, even, than those affecting the changes know.

As I watch in stunned reaction, I continue to live. Plnats grow. We plant vegetables, plannng for the future. Flower buds are forming on the chives, and the second wave of tulips starts to bloom.

The marjoram is thick and green, while in New York it's flooding, and there's snow. What can I say to this reversal of fortune but Thank God?

I don't wish any illness or tragedy upon my fellow man, but truly, I feel blessed, to be here now, where the air is fading dove-wing grey, and rain looms, but we do not fear flood.

The sun that warmed my breast today was sparkling, while in Virginia, blood ran. I biked home alert for speeding cars (for drivers here are insane) but did not fear random gunfire.

I have no answer for why the world is warped, except it has been ordained, that if we, our planet's stewards, do not care for her rightly, the tilt will become skew, the balance broken, and the circular yin/yang will fall like an egg from the counter and splatter.

I fear we have unbalance. It is, though, not too late - to put down our hatred, to dissarm our disdain, to focus on rebirth and renewal that is spring, and carry those seeds of wonderment to every interaction with another.

Certinaly, many will be rebuked. Some people are not ready for a world view of faith, of hope. Yet those of us who can, must persist.

And so, as Earth Day is upon us, I wish you all faith, sprouting seeds, and hope.