Incongruity, Gratitude, and Prayers for Japan

I have meant to write, for days, about Japan.The incongruity of that disaster with what blooms here in Vermont as the glorious aftermath of ice storms: glistening ice-slicked branches that catch the light just so. Three Japanese people have fed themselves to the machine in order to lift countless others from its maw--does heroism emerge by degrees? Is one born with that seed in them? So that it is activated by need: today, I will give myself away. What prompts it? Is it urgency, or a slow-growing love of humanity that germinates into such an act? Incongruous, too, is the way my own life blossoms into snow and sunlight--a million glistening promises blanketed over still-warm earth, while an enormous wave of saltwater, an entire ocean of grief, lifts itself up and over entire cities, swallows them in its voracious hunger. Oh. I must go in gratitude, with a million prayers swelling in my quiet heart. Blessings to you, my Japanese brothers and sisters. May your bodies heal, your hearts expand with light, your land re-emerge renewed. Namaste.