Over the last couple of weeks,  Jim and I - along with thousands of other Nashvillians - have been put in the position of having to deal with something that we would rather not have to deal with, and we have seen - on a large scale and very close to home - the misery that comes with a random destructive act of nature.

Two things have helped immensely in putting this event into perspective.

The first was the final episode of Bill Moyers Journal.  Moyers' final guest was writer Barry Lopez.  From the introduction on the PBS website:

And though nature is often his inspiration, it is not his subject, Lopez tells Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL, "I'm not writing about nature. I'm writing about humanity. And if I have a subject, it is justice. And the rediscovery of the manifold way in which our lives can be shaped by the recovery of a sense of reverence for life." 

Drawing in part from philosopher Paul Woodruff's book, REVERENCE: RENEWING A FORGOTTEN VIRTUE, Lopez defines reverence as understanding "that the world will always be there, no matter how sophisticated our technologies of probing reality become. The great mystery will be there forever. And it's the sense that it's not yours to solve. And the issue of a solution to a mystery is perhaps not a sign of wisdom. I am perfectly comfortable being in a state of ignorance before something incomprehensible. And it's in that moment that you're driven to your knees and you believe — I wouldn't call it religious. It's just what happens when you open up again to the extraordinary circumstances of being alive."  

And, of course, those "extraordinary circumstances of being alive" aren't always good things.  Lopez further elaborates:

BARRY LOPEZ: Humanity. And, you know, what Charles Taylor or Idi Amin did, or Hitler or Stalin or any of these reprehensible human beings. What they did is-- we should condemn. Humanity is also Michelangelo. Or humanity is also Darwin. Humanity is Epictetus or anybody that you want to pull out of the fabric. I mean, if you have the Bach cello suites in your head at the same moment that you're looking at a gas chamber at Auschwitz. Then to me you've got some hope of being fully aware of what it is that we're enmeshed in. 

BILL MOYERS: Well, this, of course, is the puzzle, isn't it? I mean, in that quote, high civilization of Germany at the time. The generals walked in the garden, listening to Bach and Beethoven, while a mile away, the gas chambers were working overtime. 

BARRY LOPEZ: There was no capacity to imagine their own humanity was being destroyed there. The way in which they were ethically compromised by what they were doing. What I hope that I'm saying is that there is in the interior of those six cello suites that Bach wrote. An homage to a quality that is apparent to a Western imagination about beautiful proportion and rhythm; increment and spatial volume. 

There's something captured in them. And that is the fuel that you use to open yourself up to everything else, even those things that- break your heart. You have to see into the whole. You know, we talk about wilderness. People talk about- did you ever see a wilderness calendar that wasn't full of lyrical images? You know, I used to think when I was a kid, "Well, that's not nature. Nature's not a lyrical experience of a kind of Bierstadt paintings. Nature is the full expression of life." 

And you have to be present to all of it. And then you have to ask yourself, "Why does the Dalai Lama laugh? Why does Desmond Tutu--you know, was somebody that I worked with once--why is he capable of such laughter?" And I think part of the answer is that they're fully comfortable with the riotous expression, the darkness and the light, of what it means to be alive.  

I have to believe that there was some reason we watched this interview less than two days before the flood.  I find myself going back to these words now, and finding great comfort.

Then there was another Barry, OS's dear friend Barry Doyle, who wrote this post, one of the most touching acts of kindness I've ever experienced here. And I have to believe that Barry's use of the words "an odd mixture of hope and despair" to describe the emotions embodied in the photograph of a cemetery monument in Nashville's Mt. Olivet Cemetery is not coincidental.  As he says, these are things we have had in full measure.

And so, yesterday, as I washing my kitchen floor (and being very thankful that I have a kitchen floor to wash), I found myself humming a piece of music over and over, a piece that was used to conclude Bill Moyers' interview with Barry Lopez. 

This work will surely be instantly recognizable to most of you.  I had heard it used in movies and commercials, but I don't think I had ever really listened to it before.

Although I live in a town full of musicians, I don't pretend to understand that language.  But I know that I can feel and experience music in my body and soul. And it completely mystifies me that this human being, J.S. Bach, who was born the same way we all are, who died as every human must, and who had the same DNA that we all share, possessed the gift to compose something that expresses so exquisitely the joy, despair, longing and transcendence of our human experience.  Just as I can never understand what allowed someone like Stalin to cause the unimaginable suffering that he did, I can never understand what allowed Bach to ascend to such heights.  It is all a part of the great mystery, and I simply have to embrace it.

I would ask you to spend the next few minutes simply listening, and allowing yourself to experience fully whatever happiness or sadness or yearning is a part of your life right now.