Out of the Clouds

My posting today was going to be about how snow in the mountains and freezing rain in the flats has discombobulated everyone here scurrying to work to school to wherever...the early winter...disregarding our feeble cries of not being ready...so used to the summer many have forgotten that time marches on... However...what the inclement weather really kept bringing to my mind was the manner in which others have been disastrously affected by the latest war of weather in the last couple of months...and most notably in the past week. As the cold water dripped onto my head and I observed the mud lining the paved and unpaved streets I remembered those in Central America and particularly in the Mayan villages of Guatemala. Usually...I try to keep a head in the clouds approach to world events... only occasionally peeking out to see if I can find out what's really going on out there. I know and am fully aware that awful things continue to happen worldwide but I prefer not to focus or dwell on the snippets I sometimes catch scrolling across the tv screen or the internet pages. Once in a while though...the news which does leap out causes me to do some further investigating... especially when someone says to me "did you hear about what's going on in ....(fill in the blanks)" So...this morning...thanks to a very slow day at work...and a very fast computer...I was able to "surf the net" for news of the latest disaster to reach our ears (prior to the natural-disaster horror which has hit Pakistan...as I write this...a headline catches my eye..."Quake Despair Grows...30,000 dead: No Aid").)...the Mayan villages wiped out in and around the Department of Solola...hundreds of villages affected once more by manmade or natural calamity...thousands dead...vanished during the night by heavy waves of mud sliding into the villages and homes...into family compounds where dozens of family members were lost... instantaneously... vanished into the oozing mud...buried under 30 feet or more of muck...now to be declared "cemeteries"...
The magnitude of the reality unfolded there and in other parts of Central America devastated by a force currently given the name of Sam...wants to make my mind shut down...how would a survivor live through the horror...of losing so many and so much...of being forced to abandon and leave bodies of loved ones in the mud...without being given the proper ceremony to carry them into the afterlife...how would one face the present...and the future... find hope to begin...to live... laugh... love...and rebuild...again...
For me...the helplessness of not being able to do anything to alter or better what has unfolded...hurts...so I turn my mind to what I can do...and find perhaps an answer...in the power of thought...thoughts sent by those who can still see the hope in living...thoughts of hope and strength sent to those elders...children...brothers and sisters facing those awful days and nights of anguish and of hunger...thoughts to ward off and counter the despair and the agony which must be feeding in the air...thoughts sent in trust that this too will pass for those afflicted... thoughts of thankfulness for the blessings which surround me and mine... Tonight...in class... the unseen opponent which I face and do battle with will be pain... hardship...sorrow... and desperation...in my own limited way I will fight for those unfortunate ones in the only way possible to me...with mind focused in the goodness of life...prayer...and a healing for humankind...