I'd just settled into the easy chair at Barnes and Nobles cafe when it felt as though someone had just bumped into the back of my chair. Hmm, some careless barrista banging his cart into the other side of the wall, I thought. Then the growing vibration, the more than occasional bumping, felt through the back of the chair, the floor, the lady over in the corner pulling off her headset, "Do you feel that?" Between strangers, knowing glances asking without words, "When do we run?" A young man at the table in front of me, "It's an earthquake. They're feeling it in Washington."
"The Utne Reader" is not a magazine I'd picked up in a while, years, actually. What unconscious prescience had brought me to turn to the article on--check out the current edition for yourself--on nature's apocalypse--specifically, Haiti style? At least that's what I think the article is about. I made it only to the third paragraph before the conversation between author and reader was somewhat rudely interrupted by Mother Nature.
I live a few miles south of the epicenter. Believe me, what we coffee drinkers and readers and laptoppers felt here was nothing close to the twist and shout they got in D.C. and destinations north. For a few moments I was the only one in the room who recognized what was happening. Indianapolis, Indiana sits over a major fault line, the name of which I don't recall. Midera, Madra something or other that sounds like that's the name.
Back in the eighties when our young family was living there, several times we'd be sitting at dinner and notice the wine beginning to move back and forth in tiny waves inside the glass. Such are the moments when our language allows us to mingle the sacred with the profane--Holy Shit! A phrase recognizable to most everyone from the deep South to my beloved New England just a few hours ago.
Earth moves beneath your feet, and something inside you is moved to summon whatever Sacred powers we may hope exist; while we simultaneously recognize the unsavory fragilities of human existence. My mother may not like my using the phrase, but "Holy Shit!" well describes human experience.
Rarely do I listen to the radio when I'm driving. Today was no exception, preferring to rock out to a CD I'd just picked up of my favorite live Fleetwood Mac concert, "The Dance." On my day off I much prefer Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks rocking "Go Your Own Way" to one another than having to listen to yet another Rick Perry idiotic misreading of American history. (No, Mr. Perry, the Black experience cannot be likened to the Republican quest for less taxes! But don't get me started.)
I was surprised when I got home and turned on the news to discover that what had been a little rumbling at the book store was in fact much more. And, much, much more. Seems there was more damage than a few cracked walls and fallen chimneys and smashed cars.
I mean, Holy Shit! As if...? I mean, As if an earthquake isn't enough! There's this hurricane that looks like it's trying to make up it's fickle mind whether to slam Florida or cut right and head into North Carolina and Virginia before it goes after my younger daughter and her horses up in New England.
But, wait a minute, CNN is cutting away to Libya because the rebels have taken Gadaffe's compound and no one knows where he is.... Then there's this quick cut back to the House of Representatives guy who's saying our intelligence community and whoever the Hell else is in charge needs to get over there really fast because we need to find a way to make sure the mustard gas and other chemical weapons don't fall into "the wrong hands...."
Okay. Here we go. It's nine pm, my time. Nine pm. Our time. All of our times. The earth has shifted beneath our feet. There's a major hurricane bearing down on us. And a bunch of rag-tag hero freedom fighters who don't know shit from shit about running a country are suddenly sitting on top of God only knows how much Weapons of Mass Destruction stuff that could wipe out half of New York if the wrong fanatics get hold of it.
Damn. I just can't figure out how I keep picking the wrong day to stop drinking!
Let's sort this out. Two events, earthquake and hurricane, are Mother Nature's invention. I can't; you can't; none of us can do squat about whatever Ms. Nature decides to do. It's sort of like that old margarine ad: Mother Nature's back! And, I would ad, She's pissed!! And after everything we've made her suffer through, who could blame her? Nature brings her version of Apocalypse.
Then there's this other situation. Libya. Gaddafi. WMD. Well, I guess we humans have to take responsibility for that. Just as we, as a species--well, what else do you think we are? if not one more species beside the rest of the bugs and bees and grasshoppers and birds and, well, you get it... We bring our own apocalypse... Libya. Washington. Our decisions have consequences. Karma happens. We make history. History makes us. It's always both/and. Apocalypse Now.
When I was a doctoral candidate, my committee chairman, a scholar now well known to all in the field of the history of religions, told me, "Alan, history is a whirlwind. Often, we are caught up in it. But we are never without freedom. We choose how we will respond to the events that sweep us up in histories' storms."
Okay. It's now almost ten o'clock, my time, our time. This is all totally freelance... So I ask... How am I going to respond to all I've experienced today? Tomorrow morning? What kind of attitude am I going to get up with? It's my choice. ?
Hey, it comes down to this: we hit the world with one of two attitudes, life preferences, ways of being in this world.... Either I choose to go out into this world tomorrow morning with.... either an attitude of faith... or fear... I choose faith.
Faith in myself as a moral human being who knows that were it not for my sense of morality, of right and wrong, I could not have written any of this. Faith in the teachings of Christ, and of the Dalai Lama; that is: that compassion for all sentient beings is the highest ethical standard to which any of us can aspire.
Fear cringes. Fear hides in a cave. Fear says I can't do anything that matters. Fear says we are the helpless pawns of blind fate... and nothing besides.
Faith says I will have compassion. Compassion says, I care, and I'll do all I can for the victims of natural disaster.
Faith, the very essence of compassion, says, I do all I can for the victims of man-made catastrophe, like Libya, or.... wherever humanity has used it's freedom to royally screw up.
Okay. So. I mean, Holy Shit! What a day to stop drinking! Natural disasters by the truckload. Human malevolence that could destroy millions! So.... really.... how do I get up in the morning and carry on?
Faith? Fear? You figure it out.... I'm going to bed... But.... See you tomorrow...
The Jawbone
