Putting the pieces back together

For many of us, this week is just like any other week. We routinely leave the house, go to work, school or whatever other routines we have. We make plans for the weekend, for social outings, for visiting with friends and family .... life goes on. But for some, life will never be the same again.

It was Sunday morning in Canada when the news first was heard about the cyclone that hit Myanmar the previous evening. News reports that began pouring out of that south-asian nation on Sunday and which have continued to the present recount the pain, devastation and loss of countless thousands. In the rubble that once was their home, survivors are now not only looking for lost relatives, but searching for the most basic of necessities: food, water, some kind of order which will someday be restored.

On one hand, it might be easy for some to stand by and watch. From a distance, we might be able to offer some meagre assistance but truth be told, aside from prayer, there is not much else we can do from this distance, or is there? Nature is not the only force capable of generating a cyclone, yet many of the devastating storms of life seem to go relatively un-noticed until it's almost too late to do anything about putting the pieces back together.

Ought we not be at least somewhat solicitous of the erosion that is caused to families, to relationships, to perceptions about the truths we profess when we choose to water them down, all in the name of professionalism or tolerance? Sometimes it takes a major disaster in order to waken within us the realization that things need to be tended to. At other times, miseries can actually help us to jettison that which is no longer needed in favor of that which is truly worthwhile, beautiful and valuable.

Sometimes, if we're truly lucky, wise and astute, we manage to identify the crumbling walls around us, and tend to the cracks before it's too late. The pieces having been put together still reflect the ravages that have been endured, but the scars become part of a new design to the template which themselves bear the makings of true beauty.