"In the beginning . . . the earth was tohu va-vohu. Darkness was on the face of the deep and God's spirit was hovering over the face of the water."
I kind of know how God felt.
Tohu va-vohu has been interpreted in different ways. But the generally accepted sense of the phrase is a presence of chaos and disorder that encompasses both a physical and emotional experience: a disorder that amounts to a type of soul-sucking void.
Our Torah begins with tohu va-vohu and so does a life. I try to hold on to this, our tradition's earliest story, as my space is turned upside down and I feel like I'm losing it. Thank God Marc has been here through the final phases of the Boise chaos to do my bidding: find missing tape, toss miscellaneous items into baskets, bins and even trash cans, run errands, pull nails out of walls and pick fragments of packing peanuts off every conceivable surface.
According to the text, God handles the swirling mayhem with a greater sense of peace than I can muster. In the first few verses of Genesis, God calmly proceeds to create a world through dividing - light is shed and separated from dark, one called day and the other called night. Water above is separated from other water below. Water below is gathered into two sections, God naming one land and the other sea. Step-by-step everything is contained, categorized and labelled. Chaos yields to order and life becomes possible.
Scripture does not mention permanent marker or yellow duct tape which is the method that I preferred for my far more modest yet personally monumental creation effort. Yellow taped items go into my parents' house, non-taped boxes and furniture into a storage unit.
God may have created alone, but my own ordering process required help. At left are Helping Hands movers who were amazing at squeezing way too many possessions into a 17' truck.
At each phase of creation, God pauses, steps back, and appreciates the present simply for what it is. A moment in time. Not complete. Not ideal. But, as God declares, "it is good." It is ours to reflect this Godliness and all I can say is: I shall try.
Tuesday, February 28th
I have noticed over years of chaplaincy that many of my patients include in their story, "And I have to deal with this hospital stay when I'm right in the middle of a move!"
How come so many people end up in the hospital when they're moving?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that I visited with so many orthopaedic patients. There's nothing like a box- and possession-strewn house to bring a broken femur into your life.
But I can easily see how this physical and emotional chaos can lead to medical crisis. In fact, I have been very cognizant of this connection over the past week, hoping that I didn't end up saying good-bye to my co-workers only to end up back in the Emergency Dept the following night.
I did manage to get out of town without a personal trip to St. Al's but I didn't leave completely unscathed. Chewing on a hard candy, I broke a bracket off my back molar and had to begin my final day as a Boisean driving out to my orthodontist in Meridian. Knowing the crises that could have potentially awaited me, I can't complain.
Marc and I slept at Dan's but I returned home to shower. With my bathroom door closed I could pretend everything was normal. I hadn't yet packed it up. But I eventually had to venture out into the mess of the incompletely packed bedroom. Little by little everything is sorted, packed, categorized, taped up and labelled. Marc packs up the last of it in the truck. The creation process continues.
I look out my bedroom window for the last time: the foothills view that has brought peace and beauty to my life for 9-1/2 years.
Can I bring myself to say, "it is good?" But it is. Thusly a life begins.
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