We were hit hard by a hurricane at the end of August and are still reeling from its effects. We lost the roof over the kitchen veranda which covers the major part of the house and we lost the roof over the veranda of the second floor and also the roof of our yellow Hummer – all a great big dent in Wally’s World! The worst for me was the loss of my veranda – a kitchen garden of 18 years, my eco-playground of tropical plants, a collection of succulents, herbs, and tree-top creatures – iguanas and fly-through birds, dragonflies and butterflies. Without a roof it is not fit for plants or creatures. The sun is too, too hot. The whole house is vulnerable to the heat, the kitchen being the worst. As it is now, the heart of the home is an oven.
What are we to learn? That destruction clears the way for new, that beauty depends on order to rest on, that when the order is gone, another order evolves, that chaos is uncomfortable, temporary and necessary, that we too are in the way of being reordered. My spiritual exercise: accept this wreck, inhabit it, create again. At the core of my home-maker-heart, make everything belong again. That longing fuels me even though I’m tired.
Wally’s list gets longer, not shorter and the bulk of the work falls on his shoulders. He’s worked like a young bull his whole life and was looking forward to more ease. My heart aches to see him have to rebuild just as he was savoring what we had made.
Resisting the tyranny of the urgent, we ask ourselves a simple question: what is the right action needed today? Do that thing well.
Life unfolds, into what we don’t know, but we trust that the movement is always in the direction of more life. As we look up and out, from within and beyond, this is the pattern of love.