Although it has been a hectic few days, I have been thinking about issues of safety.  This theme has been with me for a long time (look at my career!) but recently raised by a number of things including a requirement to add hard-wired, interconnected smoke detectors to our house before it is sold.  I also think about safety in a couple of other ways.  Some people have looked at our impending move as (perhaps) imprudent given that we are 'old' and thus more likely to be in need of emergency care at some point in the not too distant future.  The question, then, is why move to a remote area with no cell phone coverage and a 30 minute ambulance ride to the hospital?  This question may be the logical equivalent of why go to a movie theater when someone might come in a shoot the place up?  Or why work in a New York high rise when terrorists might come and crash an airplane into it?  Or why go swimming when you might drown?  Ultimately human beings die.  The issue is not that our lives end but rather what do we do with our lives while we are here present.  I feel that I have a lot more pondering to do about this before I write further, and I am holding two thoughts this morning:

Psalm 127

Unless the Lord builds the house,
   those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord guards the city,
   the guard keeps watch in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
   and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
   for he gives sleep to his beloved.


and:

time past and time future
what has been and what might have been
point to one end
which is always present

-T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton