love: as a natural disaster

Jun 03, 2008 - 15:07 PM PST

there are devasting things that happen every
single day. Things like earthquakes, monsoons, and
things like Hurricane Katrina and the eruptions
at Mt. St. Helen. Things that are inevitable
but completely and utterly undesired in these
everyday lives we live. We can't stop them at
all. Even for a moment. We have two options.
To run, or to take cover until they have
passed us by. But is this true for the
greatest, most powerful natural disaster there
is in this world? Is it true for love? Many
times have I told people how useless, how very
stupid it is to hide from love, to run from love.
Perhaps that's why people are so afraid. Because
it's the only natural disaster, we simply can't avoid
So, how do we handle it? What do we do? What can
we do? Can we even do anything? It's not a hurricane
that pops up on out satellites flashing red danger as a
warning, it's not a tornado assumed to accompany
other storms, or even a volcano caused by shifts in the
tectonic plates. It's like a sink hole. Sudden & harsh,
terrifying & mesmerizing, swallowing things whole. Devouring
them with their afternoon tea, completely&totally putting the
order of things at a screeching, shouting, ear shattering
halt. Sometimes if we're lucky, the nature, the earth
itself may spit us back up to the surface. So we
can sputter out into the light, clearing out our
mouths of the mud so we can tell out silly little stories.
About how love itself ate us in one giant
gulp. We'll talk about how dark it is but how very
warm we feel so close to the earth's molten core.
But also how cold, and isolating it feels to be so far
from the sun, and the body heat of the world. How even though
at times you were lonely, you were never once
alone. That even though you hated the feeling,
the helplessness, the overwhelming emotion. You'd give
anything to have that feeling back, because,
it makes you whole.