I
spent most of yesterday baking and cooking. This is not really like me. I don’t
mind cooking so much, but my intention is generally to keep things as quick and
easy as possible. Because of that, I am even less into baking. You can’t get
away with improvising as much, and it is never easy.
Still,
but the end of the day I had produced about 7 loaves of pumpkin bread, 3 dozen
peanut butter blossoms, three trays of enchiladas, and a batch of chocolate
truffles. I did it because I wanted to do something good, and give out some
happiness if I could. I think it was largely because of the school shooting.
It’s
not like I wasn’t already down. I wrote two blog posts based on the Clackamas
shooting and that seemed bad enough, and then suddenly there was one that was so
much more horrific, and then there were the stabbings in China and several
other gun stories over the next few days, and it almost doesn’t register
because you are still so numbed by what already happened, but it is there.
Mom
keeps saying that it’s the last days, and of course there is all this talk
about the Mayan calendar, and this is a theme that I revisit from time to time,
so let’s go back there. First of all, previous posts:
My
main concern with the one is I realize now that the math section makes me look
like a Young Earth-er, and I’m not. Honestly, that was long enough ago that I
may not have known at the time that there were people who think of the creation
days as literally consisting of 24 hours. Clearly from the rest of this post, I
do believe in the Bible, but since there are clearly parts that are figurative,
mistranslated, and missing, I just wouldn’t make that my sticking point. I try
to save my fanaticism for loving people and helping the poor, which go well
together, but that’s just me.
Anyway,
I am not expecting anything more horrible to happen than usual. I still think
the model in my timeline post is reasonable, but even then I could imagine one
really big thing or lots of pretty big things, and it sort of doesn’t matter.
Bad things are happening now, and will keep happening.
For
the most part we go on. We’ve seen the World Trade Center, and Hurricane
Katrina, and now when you say the Tsunami now it means Japan, but it was
Southeast Asia before that, and so many more, with natural disasters and
man-made, and more and more that are a combination of both—something that we
made much worse.
And
we recover. We are horrified and shocked, and then life gets back to normal, until
the new thing shocks us. That may seem kind of horrible, but there is something
beautiful about it too. The constant pull of life is beautiful—that no matter
how much you hurt, you still need to eat and sleep and bathe, and that ends up
meaning cooking and cleaning, and you have to pay bills so you go to work. With
all the things that you keep doing because you have to, room is made for things
that you want to, and we still do want to see movies and listen to songs and
talk to people. Life holds on to us and we hold on to life.
It
is also beautiful that despite all of the evidence of bad being out there, we
continue to not expect it, except I worry about how possible it will be to
sustain that, and how much we need it.
After
the Clackamas shooting, Mom was expressing concern because my sisters go to
Washington Square a lot, and it could happen there, and I said, “Yes, there
will be another shooting, but it will be on the other side of the country, and
it will be worse.” There was no satisfaction in being right about that, but it
also bothers me a little that I did know, but we’ve been down this way before.
We know the patterns, and I do see things as escalating. I’m not looking
forward to that.
However,
my belief in the scriptures about how I need to be also makes them a source of
comfort. Revelation (and other parts of the scriptures, but people focus there)
does refer to a lot of calamities, but it also teaches of salvation.Christ will
return, and usher in a thousand years of peace, and there will be reunions and
yes, there will be punishment, but God is more compassionate than people. There
will be a lot of learning and healing, taking in a lot of people that it would
be easy to write off.
It
is my belief that we are getting closer to this that inspires a lot of my
interest in emergency preparedness, but keep in mind, when it really is “the
end”, and that is not even an end, your temporal preparedness is no longer an
issue. Food storage and emergency savings and first aid training should be
beside the point then. Those things are to get us through now, whatever has led
up and whatever else comes before.
It’s
not that I don’t still care about those things, I do, but I have been thinking
more about the emotional side of it now. I guess this goes back to the comic
book again, which has been such a big part of my year. (And there the solar
flares kick off around 8 PM tomorrow night, starting disaster far beyond what
you would expect, but I’m going to a party that starts at 8 tomorrow, and I
believe it will be fine.)
A
big part of writing it was that it was hurting me that it is a cruel world, and
not one that my emergency preparedness skills help with. I did write about that
little, and I guess I can link to it, but there is just the issue of being
depressed by all of the nastiness and the suffering, and somehow writing about
these people stuck in the post-Apocalyptic dystopian future fixed it. They lost
loved ones and died themselves and had really hard times, but their kindnesses
to each other, and their love for each other, made it beautiful. I cried a lot
writing it, and I still get teary reading many parts, but also I love it.
Over
on the preparedness blog, the practical tips like water storage are important,
but sometimes I think the most important posts are the emotional ones: Three
keys to happiness, Preparing to not let your heart wax cold, and On not being
offended.
So basically, yesterday it got me in the kitchen. I
call that Wisonsin therapy, based on a throwaway line from an old episode of
Caroline in the City, and reinforced by a coworker who hails from Madison.
We’ve only made two deliveries, and apparently have affected three families.
There is more to come. There are other, non-food things that I am working on
too, and I will probably right about those, but ultimately, it’s still always
going to be about the love. It has to be.
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