Lessons in how to breathe

To watch what's happening in Texas at this moment leaves you breathless. All that flooding is astonishing. Being astonished, I'd hazard, is good for the soul. I don't mean to be callous about the millions suffering this morning, or to forget the families of those who've died. I only mean to say that a natural catastrophe of this size and destructiveness reminds us all, even those thousands of miles away, of how powerless we can be in the face of so great a power. That realization can be a blessing because it doesn't hurt us, Americans especially perhaps, to know once again how powerless we are. 

Generally, astonishment is a momentary thing; we don't necessarily stay astonished. It has an immediacy created by things outside of us--events like natural disasters--experiences that leave us breathless. 

Awe is astonishment's older, wiser grandparent; awe is a way of life, an attitude taken most to heart when we're on our knees. Astonishment can teach us awe, just as hurricanes can teach us humility, bring us back to our senses about who we are and what our work really is. Thousands of neighbors, otherwise strangers, became life-savers yesterday in south Texas, because yesterday, in the face of overwhelming danger, compassion took control of real lives.

I was a thousand miles away from all that water yesterday, out in our backyard when I couldn't help noticing that the sedum was being 'et by creatures folks so hard at work--on the Sabbath, too!--that they had didn't even notice the giant with the camera. No flooding here, but still a kind of astonishment.

A purple prairie coneflower I'd started to doubt would ever open, gushed last week and became a cafe, these two customers not minding each other one bit.

"The camera," Dorothea Lange, once wrote "teaches you how to see without the camera." She's right, but you still have to look. And yesterday, twenty feet from our back door, I couldn't help but be astonished at the beauty of a world I had to look to see, a tiny world that's nothing at all like a hurricane, but still astonishing.

John Calvin claimed that faith comes into our lives when, in nature, we can't help but see our powerlessness, can't help but see that we aren't God, that someone, something else, is. That need bleeds us of pride and puts us on our knees, puts us in awe. 

Life will be forever changed for the people caught in the torrent that is stalling over south Texas, but I can't help but believe that in the face of a tragedy no one can still quite imagine, we'll all be left in awe. And that may be a good thing in our national story.

Some have died, thousands will suffer; I don't want to minimize the tragedy. But I can't help but think this storm can be a blessing.

Things that take our breath away can teach us better how to breathe.