Tag: Tallulah River

We’re fortunate here in North Carolina thus far this week in spite of recent losses. Tornadoes, not just tidal waves, don’t beg forgiveness. My home had a bit of adventure, big branch crashing down awakening me at 5:15 am, catapulting me out of bed flying. Lightning loves water and Bradford Pear trees hold it well enough to split the night when the bolts come crashing. Something about being dragged out of sleep by reverberating blasts of nature’s brew invigorates and exhausts all at once. It’s been a day already and it’s not even 9:30. Or is it a week in a day? I’m not complaining. I don’t live in Alabama, Mississippi or, amazingly, Georgia where folks (including my parents) huddled in basements and hallways and more than 170 succombed to nature’s brutality. My folks are fine but tired and their home is safe.

I’m struck today how the slightest passage of time, movement of the earth spinning out tales of woe and glory can change a life in just a flash. How that same change ripples across decades, tying some people together in love, tearing others apart. While at Tallulah River I was captivated by the fact that a split second decision to reach out to a gal I didn’t know, after years of being schooled in a highly strict cubicled environment (and rendering me very shy and insecure), has joined 5 children together (especially two gals – our daughters) in ways whispering of generations beyond now. They enjoyed the roaring river call, hugging and huddling at water’s edge, filling my heart with awe. This is heritage. To turn on a dime and make a split second decision, take a risk, follow the heart, trust life’s tides and even, painfully, life’s tidal waves. (And tornadoes)

These events, the trigger effect of choices and their forces, winds and rains speak of the power of the flow of life and of soul. How much more richness and learning supreme we reap when we sow in the winds of intuition, of those nudgings to move in a certain direction or reach out to someone somewhat “foreign” without any logical reason to do so. We might rationalize it, enlist a whole outline of reasons after the fact or during the act but that initial subtle but lightning quick prompt cannot ultimately be fathomed. The depths are way and well beyond us. And that’s a good thing. We need, thrive on mystery.

And so it is. I await the claims adjuster’s call and contemplate friendships near and far, friends safe and saved from harm and how the winds of life’s mysteries have joined us. We all have our days in a morning every now and then, cram-jamming “accidents” and coincidence into meaningful efforts in love while sirens blare and lives are lost or found in the wreckage. We build. We grow. We learn how precious it all is and the treasures life grows up from the cracks grace our lives, and even our tables, with glory we would never fully appreciate were it not for the vulnerability, the potential for loss, the risk we call fate.

On. With. It.