Any Day, Any Season

I empathize so, for the trauma and casualty caused by recent tornadoes in the Midwest. What a horrible loss for so many to endure. Those of us, thousands of miles from the path, mustn’t take our luck for granted though there is rarely a life that isn’t visited by tragedy. 

It occurred to me, buffeted in the car as I drove south through a northwest  storm, rain so thick the wipers couldn’t keep up, that the storms surrounding us are metaphor for the way we live: sometimes we can’t see beyond the windshield for all the pelting rain. 

We slow, or perhaps even stall out, stuck by the roadside as others continue on; we admire their fortitude, whoever they are, or chastise their foolishness depending on our own piety. The brightness of their tail lights illume the wash of windshield immediately ahead. We glimpse a little clarity between the quick swipes of the wipers and wonder how they see enough to proceed; or what it is they see that keeps them moving forward?

Perhaps in such a storm as we each must endure it eventually occurs to us that to act is the only way to proceed, the risk being a worthy one, especially when we understand that we must first help another before we can possibly see clearly enough to help ourselves. The traffic continues on.

It’s a brief journey, these moments of metaphor and I find myself staring at my hands. I look up and see my children in the rear view mirror, see their bright faces, their resilient joy and abundant curiosity and I wish, pray really, for blue skies and calm.

Little lives: such an incredible gift and how utterly shameful it is to see them strewn by parents caught in the glint of their own needs or the wrath of their own storms.

I pity the children – not a noble feeling; nor is cursing the parents responsible.

As mornings break clear and warm, we must ask in what little way can we reach out to these lost children, or even the found ones, even our own, reach out and place in their supple little hands a seed for planting in soils worthy of their gifts.