The huge storm barreling across most of the country created only fog here in the south. Soon after sunrise the lake began to disappear into its quiet embrace and by mid day it was no longer visible.  As I drove into the city even the expressway's straight no nonsense look had been transformed, the fog creating a beautiful mysterious tunnel.   I smiled wondering if the early morning commuters imagined they were not really going to arrive at their desks on the other end, but somehow through the magic of the fog arrive in a mysterious new world.
Our world at this moment is full of upheaval.  Events thousands of miles away are not unlike the huge storm here--both are changing the lives of thousands of people.  Where they and us will end up after the tumult of the political storm has an eerie kinship to the fog drifting across the ridge of the lake.

Living involves storms and fog. One day life is as it has been for years and then it seems out of the blue everything changes. We pour ourselves into our jobs and relationships, working so hard to make our way only to have it  all washed away no matter how hard we try to keep afloat.  Sometimes even though the change is joyous, we still feel the tremors of fear. Change creates all kinds of feelings a great many of which we can't understand until much later. We want the security of the knowable and will do anything to keep from going out into the unknowable fog.

Earlier  this week at the market I bought flowers-- tender pink tulips.  I was in a hurry and busy loading up the checkout belt..  The flowers rang up first, and moved on towards the young man waiting to bag them. I love this market, it is full of beautiful food and folks from all over the world.  Having finished unloading my cart, I turned and saw the young bagger holding the pink tulips, his face alight, eyes shining.  "Look", he said in his beautiful accent, "they have the faces of newborn babies!"

Be still my heart.

Perhaps when our world feels unsafe, when we are frightened by our own storms of change and challenge, feeling shrouded in the terrible fog of uncertainty, perhaps we can remember this moment. I have no way of knowing what this young man's life had been like before he stood at the end of the checkout lane bagging produce. I would feel sure though he had weathered a good share of change and hardship in order to be there.  Life asks that of everyone. But he had weathered whatever he had to in order to end up where he now was, his eyes shining, holding in his hands the promise that waits for all of us on the other side-- a chance for a new life.