Saturday, February 19, 2005Thunder at NightThunderstorm at night. I am alone in the dark with my work.I listen to the crackling booms arcing overhead and I scan my world. The perimeters of my house: the roof is new, the hillsides are solid, the trees are trimmed. Good. Are my children safe in their beds? Yes. Are the other loved ones in my life secure? They are. My thoughts go out to touch everyone and every place I love and am concerned about. Weather makes me feel so small, so vulnerable, so connected. And I love it. Because once I complete my scan, and find everything and everyone intact, it makes me feel safe. But the rolling thunder across our little valley also makes me think of mortar shells, gunfire, bombs. We are so lucky that the only thing that awakens us at night is the conflict of electrical impulses in the sky. I fear that our luck has made us fragile and foolhardy. That we somehow don't understand how easily it could be us. That it could be Glendale or Norwalk or Burbank under seige. That Beverly Hills could be in smoking ruins. That war could be here, on our soil, our waking nightmare. We are oblivious as we walk through the world village. And in our oblivion we toss out insults, pass by starving strangers, laugh too loud and too easily. We are not making friends. We don't seem to understand the price of our bravado. How small it makes us in many ways. When I complete my scan from this perspective, I grow truly afraid. Our land is not intact. Our children are not safe. We are alone in the night. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 4:44 AM  
Comments: Of course. In my experience (which certainly includes undue attachment to money, stuff, and people), security comes not from without; it stems solely from the absolute knowledge (borne only of conscious experience) that we are connected to the source. The Source. The Higher Power. (My mom says, "Dear, what's wrong with calling it 'God?'" "Nothing," I reply sheepishly, knowing I've succumbed to the political correctness of the New Age). Okay, Mom: knowing we're inexorably connected to God. Therein lies true security. That -- and, say, $87 million tax-free dollars. # posted by  zan : 11:21 AM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
# posted by zan : 11:23 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home
|
