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The sky is falling
Apr. 15th, 2006 02:12 amI feel terribly weird. I don't truck with apocalyptic yahoos who go around babbling about the end times, not at all. And yet, ever since late August I've had this odd thought process constantly running in the back of my head. Katrina devastated NOLA, Rita hit parts of Texas that have never in recorded history experienced hurricane winds (including my hometown), incredible earthquakes in the Kashmir, the Kentucky tornadoes, and now the Iowa tornadoes.
I know for a fact that this is mostly a matter of perspective. No matter how big they were, I know that I feel especially close to Katrina and Rita because of where I'm living and where I've lived. The Ky and Iowa tornadoes are really run of the mill tornado season with better aim than usual (and pinpointed aim on my friends); just ask Xenia, Ohio, which can't seem to stop getting flattened season after season. The Kashmir thing... well, ok, that was pretty major, but disasters happen all the time, and not just in the past months.
And yet, I can't stop thinking about it. I can't find it in a news report, and I forgot to ask Kate, so I don't know when the tornadoes hit Iacty last night, but it strikes me as quite possible that it was as we were singing Aquinas' beautiful hymn Pange lingua while the present Body of Christ was processed through the church, or as I was kneeling in the chapel for Adoration of the same Body... Then today I started crying a little while Molly was singing "The Old Rugged Cross" and the littlest altar server gave his candle to the girl next to him so he could take his turn to kneel and kiss the cross for Veneration, because I felt a wrenching sense of loss...
I know it's me. I know this is hindsight reconstructing the events of the past to meet a certain expectation. I know the loss has nothing to do with an event I didn't even know about until after mass, and everything to do with my own personal hangups and issues. I hope that if the end days were coming we could at least muster up something better than annual weather systems, however destructive.
I still want to curl up in a little ball and cry with my cat.
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( Note to self )
I know for a fact that this is mostly a matter of perspective. No matter how big they were, I know that I feel especially close to Katrina and Rita because of where I'm living and where I've lived. The Ky and Iowa tornadoes are really run of the mill tornado season with better aim than usual (and pinpointed aim on my friends); just ask Xenia, Ohio, which can't seem to stop getting flattened season after season. The Kashmir thing... well, ok, that was pretty major, but disasters happen all the time, and not just in the past months.
And yet, I can't stop thinking about it. I can't find it in a news report, and I forgot to ask Kate, so I don't know when the tornadoes hit Iacty last night, but it strikes me as quite possible that it was as we were singing Aquinas' beautiful hymn Pange lingua while the present Body of Christ was processed through the church, or as I was kneeling in the chapel for Adoration of the same Body... Then today I started crying a little while Molly was singing "The Old Rugged Cross" and the littlest altar server gave his candle to the girl next to him so he could take his turn to kneel and kiss the cross for Veneration, because I felt a wrenching sense of loss...
I know it's me. I know this is hindsight reconstructing the events of the past to meet a certain expectation. I know the loss has nothing to do with an event I didn't even know about until after mass, and everything to do with my own personal hangups and issues. I hope that if the end days were coming we could at least muster up something better than annual weather systems, however destructive.
I still want to curl up in a little ball and cry with my cat.
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( Note to self )
