Up and Running and Pondering
Well, my cable service is now back so I can blog again. There are still people in town with no power. The news is calling what hit us "treetop tornados" and/or "microbursts". This is a picture from the local papers of one home-owner's uprooted tree. I have seen easily a dozen or more just like it through town, some with bits of curbing and sidewalks clinging to the topmost roots -- the force was that strong.
In the worst-hit area, every house has piles and piles of tree limbs stacked in front waiting to be picked up. It is a miracle there were no serious injuries reported. One of my favorite parks in town, however, now looks as though it had been bombed. One home was literally cut in half.
All of this put me smack-dab in the heart of what Buddhists know so much better than other folks -- that life is impermanent - and fragile. There is a 200 year old tree -- the symbol of solidity, endurance, stoicism. Now that tree that was a sapling not long after America became an independent nation has collapsed, roots-up, taking soil and rock with it. And what made it happen? Bombs? Bulldozers? Huge wrecking balls? Nope.
The wind.
Something we cannot even see arrives almost without advance notice and *poof*, all those symbols of endurance are snapped like twigs.
It is as though God is saying "Do you get it THIS time folks? Do you get that life is precious and can go at any minute? Do you get that your assumption of indefinitely long futures might be wrong? Do you get that you had better be doing what you love now? Huh? How many trees do I have to turn upside down for you to get that?"
OK maybe it is my metaphor and not God's, but I do believe that God wants us to be living more in the aware present than the imagined future. I am starting to really "get that".
In the worst-hit area, every house has piles and piles of tree limbs stacked in front waiting to be picked up. It is a miracle there were no serious injuries reported. One of my favorite parks in town, however, now looks as though it had been bombed. One home was literally cut in half.
All of this put me smack-dab in the heart of what Buddhists know so much better than other folks -- that life is impermanent - and fragile. There is a 200 year old tree -- the symbol of solidity, endurance, stoicism. Now that tree that was a sapling not long after America became an independent nation has collapsed, roots-up, taking soil and rock with it. And what made it happen? Bombs? Bulldozers? Huge wrecking balls? Nope.
The wind.
Something we cannot even see arrives almost without advance notice and *poof*, all those symbols of endurance are snapped like twigs.
It is as though God is saying "Do you get it THIS time folks? Do you get that life is precious and can go at any minute? Do you get that your assumption of indefinitely long futures might be wrong? Do you get that you had better be doing what you love now? Huh? How many trees do I have to turn upside down for you to get that?"
OK maybe it is my metaphor and not God's, but I do believe that God wants us to be living more in the aware present than the imagined future. I am starting to really "get that".
posted by Mata H at Tuesday, July 25, 2006
2 Comments:
only last week one of the horse chestnut trees I planted with my dad 30 years ago split in a storm - he slipped as he felled the rest of it the next day... fortunately it missed him
the next day my husband had a tree fall just in front of his car - I know what you mean about living in the present
Powerful post, Mata....thanks for the reminder...
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