We're expecting another snowstorm late tonight or early tomorrow morning. That's the bad news. The good news is that the amount of snow predicted has been significantly reduced to only 1-3 inches. Piece of cake after the 10 inches we just got.
The bad news is that the new snow will be falling on packed snow and ice that has canceled schools and closed businesses all week long. Indeed, two rural Episcopal churches I know have already canceled mass/services for Sunday because the "auxiliary roads" are still treacherous.
It seems absolutely bizarre to be sitting here when it is freezing cold outside whilst anticipating another snowstorm when Southern California is on fire.
The information I have at this moment from NPR is that there have been 10 deaths, almost 35,000 acres burned, and over 10,000 structures destroyed in LA County, with only 6% containment in the Palasaides Fire and 0% containment in the Eaton Fire.
About 180,000 people have had to evacuate and another 200,000 people are under evacuation warnings, the LA County Sheriff's Department said.
The estimate of total damage and economic loss to the region is placed at between $135 billion to $150 billion.
St. Matthew's Church in Pacific Palisades, where one of my seminary classmates is rector, lost both rectories. As I write this, it's still not clear if the church is standing. St. Mark's Church in Altadena has been completely destroyed.
My friend of many decades, and colleague and fellow activist, Susan Russell, and her beloved Lori Kizza have been evacuated from their home with their three dogs. She reports, "We are safe, exhausted, sad beyond words...." As of last evening, their house was still in the active fire zone.
All of this is happening as the POTUS-elect will be sentenced this morning in the New York hush-money case, meaning he will become the first president to have been sentenced for a criminal conviction once he's sworn into office on January 20th. His lawyers objected that this would be "potentially embarrassing" to the POTUS and a distraction from his work.
Also this week, an Appeals Court refused to block the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s findings on Donald Trump’s efforts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election. The objection was that this would be "damaging" to the POTUS and also "distracting".
One of the deep ironies, of course, is that of the 51 things the new resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has said he will do on Day One - including reducing the price of groceries, rounding up all the "illegal immigrants" and ending the war in Ukraine - is to "release the J6 hostages" - by which he means he will pardon all of the approximately 1500 people charged with federal crimes related to the January 2021 insurrection.
The world seems absolutely out of control. That's because, on one level, it is. And, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It often means that something is being destroyed so that something new can emerge.
Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnection, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization. A metaphor for this behavior is that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.
In my daily meditations since September, as the reality of cancer has begun to sink into a deeper understanding, the words that have come to me over and over again are "radical resilience".
As I've sat with this and read about the psychological, scriptural, historical, cultural, and political aspects of resistance, I'm learning that "radical resilience" is not simply "getting over" a period of time when there's been such enormous change or damage that there is no going back to the way things were.
Rather, "radical resilience" is the work of coming through adversity, or chaos, or loss with a deeper sense of acceptance and compassion for ourselves so that we can embrace the change necessary to be more of who we are called to be.
Radical resilience is not "bouncing back" but walking through. A long walk. With lots of bumps and obstacles along the way.
It's radical because the journey takes you to your roots, to "the middle of the middle" of your identity and sense of purpose, and even your relationship with others and to the world.
Radical resilience is soul work. It's what I'm in the process of doing in this "treatment phase" of my cancer diagnosis. I think radical resilience is the process in which this nation is about to engage. It started, I think, with the gut punch we all felt after the disastrous performance of the first Presidential debate.
Suddenly, we saw for ourselves that "the old" was literally not working the way we thought it should or expected it would. We knew something had to change. What we didn't know was that change was already happening and we were going to have to adapt and make changes.
Unfortunately, we started the process behind a large curve, and though we only lost by less than 1% of the popular vote - an impressive achievement in and of itself - it still was not enough to overcome the movement to bring about change through destruction.
Here's the thing: Brene Brown is absolutely right. Movements for innovation and creativity start with failure. Or, at least, a sense of one. Or, as Rahm Emanuel once said, never let a good crisis go to waste.
I wonder what change will happen in a place like California, which has the highest number of homeless people in the country, now that so many who have lived in comfortable and even affluent homes have seen their dwelling places reduced to rubble.
I wonder what changes will happen in a place like Delaware, which hasn't had a snowstorm like this since 2010 but has not made any changes since and can not afford to lose another entire week's worth of business and school and health care because it can not adequately clear its roads.
I wonder what changes - what innovation and creativity - we will see in this country in response to the hostile takeover of our democratic system by a narcissistic, corrupt, adjudicated sexual predator and fraud who intends to turn our democracy into an autocratic dictatorship.
Perhaps we will learn, finally, that the success of a representative democracy is dependent on a highly participatory citizenry.
I can't imagine living in a more potentially amazing time.
That's all for now. That's more than enough for now. If you've read this far, you get extra points for attention and participation. I look forward to your reactions/responses.
I hope something good happens to you today.
Bom dia.
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