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Sunday Morning (20)
Debbie walks the little dog this morning. On returning, she relates a special moment that she and Buddha encountered. “On walking towards the bridge over the little brook, suddenly Buddha halts and doesn’t want to move further. Something out of the ordinary has caught her attention. She takes the time to use all her senses, nose, ears, eyes, memory, and assess the situation in front of her. There, a few feet away, the water of the brook flows – but not as usually. The brook is bursting with water and just passes under the bridge in a strong current with a lot of speed. Small waves have formed on the surface, producing white foam. I don’t force her and let her observe the situation. It takes several minutes until she is convinced that moving on is still safe enough. Then she relaxes a bit and cautiously follows on the leash.”
How beautiful to watch this little wise dog taking her time, watching nature and processing all the information she needs to decide what to do. And right she is, because currently we are in a strange situation in the southern province of our country, a situation that only should occur once in 50 years, but seems to have happened so casually that it could happen any time soon again, and no one was prepared for it. It only rained for a couple of days. But the cumulating rain didn’t stop and was much more intense than normally. It caused many rivers and brooks to fill up with amounts of water far beyond their safe capacity. In some little towns not far from here, these little brooks, normally running picturesquely through the town center, caused an enormous devastation, flooding houses, damaging roads and infrastructure. We know of friends and family who’s house has been partly or completely flooded, or whose livelihood was destroyed. The large rain-river The Maas that originates in France and flows through Belgium to the Netherlands, to enter into the North Sea just below Rotterdam, has filled to the brim and was never fuller than at this moment. And much, much wider. So in many places along this river there are flooding’s also, the wave of which is slowly traveling North.
Fortunately so far, in our country there are no casualties and the elaborate system of dikes is holding. In Germany and Belgium however, where the rain also profusely fell, the situation is much worse and many people have died or are missing. Parts of small villages have completely disappeared when the local brooks turned into devastating streams within minutes.
In our neighborhood the high-water wave is slowly residing now and people who were evacuated can return to their houses, most of which were spared. Our hamlet fortunately did not have to evacuate, but we watched the situation carefully last couple of days since other hamlets in our municipality were partly evacuated.
Thankfully, the weather has changed and with high temperatures, a little breeze from the north-east and a lot of sun, the land can start to dry up again. For little Buddha, all is well with the world. She has already dreamed about the water, making muffled barking noises, and awakes fresh and unbothered.
These are just two ways in which nature, in all of her benevolence, has already restored the balance that was temporarily – at least in our personal human perception – disturbed. Of course it cannot immediately wipe out the devastation to human structures and lives that has occurred. This will take much more time, help and compassion.
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2 Replies
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I have not read these blogs before. What county do you live in? Who has CF?
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Hi Judy, it is all in the blogs, almost all of them are in the forum Adults with CF. I hope you enjoy reading them all!
Cheers,
Paul
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