Tears for Japan

It's one of those early risings.  I cannot sleep so I finally give in and get up.  It is often during these unexpected stirrings that I find my heart is heavy and I finally take the time to tune in to find out why.  I tune into my heart to learn it is Japan.


So onto the laptop I go to do something I know I need to do...face "it."  Make myself slow down to take it in.  Look at their pictures; read their stories and allow myself to feel what it is I have been putting off.  Grief and anguish surface; the tears begin to fall.


There is so often such a compelling contrast with life in one place to life in another.  Never is this more powerfully seen than when something the size of a devastating earthquake and tsunami force it into our realities.  And yet I find it is somehow easy for me to close it off, box it up, leave it "there" and it just feels so wrong...because it is.    


So this morning, I lean in, make myself look, allow the feelings to come.  The images are so heartbreaking.  So much pain, so much loss, so much still yet to be known.  Where does one start with devastation and loss of this magnitude?  How does one hope in the face of such utter despair?  Where does Japan go from here?  Where do I?  While I can choose to look away, the people of Japan have no choice but to face what is directly before them.  What they are experiencing brings such fresh perspective to the comparable insignificance of my problems.


I find I'm at a rare loss for more adequate words and platitudes at a time like this are really not helpful.  So instead I just let my prayers and tears speak for me today......prayers and tears for Japan.