Best Wisdom on the Rebuilding of Lives and Communitites : Begin !
"Rebuilding" dominates my thoughts and feelings and desires right now - involving almost everything in my life and in the lives and communities surrounding me.
My own life is certainly at one of those "watershed" moments.
Here's a trio of reasons : The death of our family's mother (I am one of eight siblings) in August, followed shortly thereafter by the devastation and disruption of my home state after two category 5 hurricanes struck within a month.
Any one of these events could have caused a paradigm shift in my life on its own; all three guaranteed it. But enough about me, as the old joke goes.
Rebuilding is also going to dominate so many lives in so many communities that surround me, far into the foreseeable future, that for once I feel right in step with the mainstream - a feeling I have seldom been host to in more than a half-century of life.
And one of the desires that runs strongest in me right now is to participate in that rebuilding as I ferociously rebuild my own life. A great place to start : a community where one of my siblings lives - which was in one of the areas most affected by the big wind and water wallop of both hurricanes.
My Brother John's home in New Orleans - July 2005Here's my blog on rebuilding New Orleans
feelings of fascination and the relatively calm enduring of the storms themselves,
and finally the feelings of shock & sadness after the storms because of the utter completeness of the destruction wrought.
But now the "rebuilding" gene I must have has kicked in and the adrenaline is beginning to pump, accompanied by the excitement AND terror that often are mates to adrenaline - sorta like standing on the edge of that 10 meter diving board as a 10 year old: it's exciting and terrifying at the same time.
"Don't worry about those butterflies," a favorite mentor used to tell me, "that's normal. Just get 'em in formation !"
Without any doubt - it's time to dive in.
