Waiting

The news is not good this morning, altho I've been expecting it. Japan. Radiation levels. Price increases on food and gasoline.

It goes on and on.

Yesterday on the way over to the church, while we were waiting for the trolleybus at the bus stop, the traffic on our main road was loud, busy and very high in pollutants (the air stank). When we returned from visiting Ira last night around 6:30, we got off across the street from that stop. There were absolutely NO cars coming from the direction we had just come, and there was one marshrutka and one other vehicle coming from the opposite direction. Very quiet. Eerily quiet. I didn't say anything to Mel, but I felt it, deep down inside my inner being.

Sometimes I wonder what it is that I "feel".

Someone commented to me recently that I always seem to be aware of earthquakes - and that is true. A year ago January, we stood in a pull-out on the side of the road in Washington State, and I wondered if we were going to have an earthquake. I "felt something", like an energy coursing through my whole body. Of course, nothing happened. We were standing in an area where if the view had been clear, we would have seen Mt. Baker, a slumbering volcano. I chalked it up to nerves from knowing what was hidden in the fog. It was only later in the evening when we returned to the hotel room that we learned of the earthquake in Haiti earlier in the day. It really is possible that I felt some of the waves that circled the earth after that quake, P waves and S waves and all that stuff I find so interesting but really don't completely understand. They showed up on monitors all over the world after Haiti, and now again after Japan (each of the bigger aftershocks also show up).

I also am very aware of other things that people don't pay a whole lot of attention to. Like a street that is normally bustling with people and vehicles - and isn't.

There is a certain kind of "stillness" in the 'atmosphere'. I have a sense that the earth is waiting for something to happen. That as the earth waits, it affects people and people are reacting in different ways.

We watched Sasha for Ira last night as she ran out and got a few things at the market. When she returned, she kind of laughed and said in almost disbelief, "Everything was 2 griven more today." Now, I don't think everything was 2 griven more yesterday at the market, but I understood what she was saying. We'd talked about the rising prices earlier in general conversation soon after we'd arrived, and she commented that she hadn't paid that much attention recently (I think too much else is going on in her life right now). A couple hours later she was at the market and saw for herself and realized what we were talking about. The reason our main street was so quiet is because gas is so expensive now, certain food prices are skyrocketing, and they are raising the prices on marshrutkas and I would guess that trolleybus prices will also rise. People can not afford it, people cannot afford to travel as much.

My tutor asked for her pay last week. I usually pay her once a month since it is simpler for both of us, and gives her a larger amount each month to use rather than a little bit here and a little bit there. Last week, however, she told me she needed the two weeks right then - she had absolutely NO money to live on until she got her pension/pay from her job later this month. I keep scraps for her cats, too - fat skimmed off meat, juice from canned tuna, skin and gristle from chicken I've boned, etc. I had a full pickle jar for her and she said 'thank you' to me about 5 times. A lot of her income goes for feeding her own cats plus cats and dogs on the street.

Fewer people walk by on the street below our balcony than usual. Maybe as spring fully arrives (it's been cold and wet so far) and summer quickly follows more people will be out on the streets. More than just the ones who go through the dumpsters every day. Every day, at various times of the day, I can look out and see usually men, but quite often a woman, going through the garbage, pulling out bottles and other usable items.

I can't help it. I don't know what it is - I only know that I "feel" it, whatever it is. Waiting. A pause in the norm. A deep, slow intake of cosmic breath. A silent sigh. A sudden shuddering. A continual silent trembling. An awareness that the air we now breathe is poisonous as never before, that the food we now consume may kill us instead of nourish us, that the water we drink may look clean and pure but in the long run is deadly.

I've been told it's not true, that I exaggerate, that I'm imagining things, that the other person doesn't believe it, that I don't trust God enough, and so forth and so on until I just don't say what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling nearly as much as I used to. Oh, I tell Mel quite often. He listens to me and if he thinks I'm nuts, well, he is kind and simply listens (I do love my husband! For many reasons!). Sometimes we have lively discussions about it all - and I need that. I don't need to be immediately shot down, I need to be able to 'work it out' somehow. Sometimes I think the other person I may be talking to is just simply afraid and doesn't want to even think about it. I can understand that. Doesn't make the problem or situation go away, but I do understand it.

So, we start the growing season and friends who usually have a huge garden have not been able to plant anything this year at all due to extenuating circumstances in their family that requires them to be gone for long periods right now. Food prices increase - they don't have a garden this year. Ouch. Spring has been very cold and wet. We'll see what happens.

For now, I trust in God. Jesus Christ is returning soon, oh so very soon! I am so thankful that we have His promises. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!