“What are you going to do with your one precious life?”
Rapture, peace, prayer;
or confusion, anger, fear?
Waiting for the tsunami
happens where I live every year.
The earthquake on the other side of the world,
and thousands of miles away
we evacuate for the mountains,
not sure if the harbors, airport, and power station will be left in the morning.
People wait for a long eight hours until the wave comes,
not knowing will it be big or small?
Will it wipe out my home or not?
The way people wait is it’s own education,
in the inevitable.
Some empty the stores of liquor and cigarettes for tailgate parties.
Others listen compulsively to the radio, fear mounting as they prepare supplies for some unknown number of days to live on.
Others chose to pray and meditate and say “I love you.”
No way is the right way.
All God.
Everyone chooses their last moment of grace,
from the bottle, the news, or their one true religion.
I love the differences and have my preference.
“God I offer myself to thee,”
will be my one true offering,
as the water claims her rightful place at the center of things.
Our mind is a bit one track when it comes to emotions. Give your mind anger, and it goes on and on about anger. Give it something to bless or love, and it does that instead. Point your mind in an emotional direction and that’s essentially it’s direction. This one track mind can work to your advantage as a channel-changer for difficult emotions. When I find I am being angry or judgmental, I begin blessing someone, something, anything. It doesn’t have to be the person I’m upset with. Heck no, not yet. But I can say a blessing for the earth, my neighbor’s dog, kids, someone driving by in a car, or anything else in that moment. And after about three minutes of blessing I don’t really have an interest in going back to the anger. Ditto if I’m in a car and someone in car in front of me does something that scares or angers me. Instead of going on and on about the person who cut me off, I send a blessing to someone in another car alongside of me, or behind me. This focusing on blessing another immediately stops the anger. It’s not that anger is bad, it’s simply that if given the choice of having anger or having kindness, I prefer the latter. And blessings can extend to neutral moments as well; the checkout clerk, sitting at a stoplight, waiting for an elevator. There are always people around you to bless no matter what is happening.