THE EARTH CRACKS OPEN IN VAN. CHILDREN ARE FREE TO PLAY OUTSIDE.

You hear a distant rumble. The lamp starts shaking. Your cup falls off the desk and the walls start moving. Meanwhile ,your brain is still catching up with what is going on. Sometimes the earthquake ends before you even understand that it is happening. Then you would sit in contemplation for a moment and have an epiphany about the impermanence of existence comforted by the gratitude for aliveness. Sometimes, though, your brain catches up with what is going on and the walls are still moving and the distant rumble is now a loud roar. Van is an Eastern City in Turkey where thousands of people experienced the earth cracking open underneath their feet in 2011. The shaking didn’t end until the houses collapsed and epiphanies were replaced with shock.

Natural disasters have a way of teaching us that we are inhabiting a planet that is alive and that nothing is permanent. I feel that reverence for the present moment and for its end has the potential to gift us a way of meaningful living on this earth. I witnessed beauty in the face of chaos, laughter in loss, and connection in destruction during the earthquake relief work in Van. Houses were gone but the mountains stood. Walls fell apart, families slept together for a while. Children were playing as their mothers cried. People gathered and made food together. Stories were being shared by the fire in disbelief, grief, and gratitude. Life is all of it, all together, all at once sometimes.