I am just trying to find a handle for a way of thinking about the Earthquake(s) which recently devastated Japan, and the subsequent tsunami.  I don't watch the on line footage ... even just reading the facts, as they are available is so difficult.  I remember the line from Milton, "...that man may know he dwells not alone..." and it swirls through me like a prayer.

This morning my husband told me about some footage he saw coming out of Japan.  He is in engineer mode.  He analyses ... I just wonder.  I wonder if we were able to see behind a veil would all those souls be walking beside calm waters as I will be ... at the beach, in a couple of days. My husband said the waves that moved ashore in California were only about eight feet tall ... he said Californians will take that in stride, viewing it as I would a tornado ... no big deal. I just don't experience it that way ... to me it feels like their pain undulating across the expanse, the overwhelming energy of it washing out while the remnants of the waves wash up in distant lands, where the loses might be mourned ... over here where it feels calmer ... over here away from the visual horror that must be the aftermath of an events like those. So many lives were lost ... and I wonder what did they take with them?  Not their stuff ... who they became.  I am interested in what comes after life as we know it.

Events like this remind me to try to consciously live as though each day is a gift ... as though each day matters. Not like scrambling to cram in every bit of this and that of who I think I want to become, but exactly like living these days down at the level of the moments as they present themselves on a breathe ... in and out ... undulating as a wave, moving me through time towards eternity.

 I have thought about how it might seem to me to be safe in an airplane and possibly see those waves coming ashore. And what did it look like to God?  (noted earlier ... published today)