MICAH Prayer Vigil Today

Today my day can be divided in three types of stops. Stop One: For the third time this month a car in front of me or in front of the car in front of me has slammed on its brakes for no good reason causing a chain reaction where I have been the middle car or last one in the chain. Fortunately none of these accidents was serious, but it has made me cautious about the distance to the car in front of me. I can understand a sudden stop for a child running in the road but this quick jamming of breaks have been for things like hearing a siren in the distance or a last second decision to stop and turn in a place of business. They do not make sense.

Stop 2: Today we had three MICAH prayer vigils for homicide victims. All three deaths were senseless arguments over some small matter that led to a senseless death. Life can be stopped, just like a car, for no good reason. Unlike the car stops these resulted in loss of life. These stops are senseless acts of violence, which, unfortunately, have become too common in our society. What used to be at worst a fistfight now is a homicide. These homicides are not natural.

Both of the above are senseless stops. I was blessed today with some natural stops. I stopped the business of life to work reflectively in the garden today. Working in the garden with simple hand tools, sifting castings, mixing coir with castings, planting seeds or watering there seems to be one natural pace to all of the work.

I stopped today to take time for a a personal tour of Growing Power by Will Allen. Will has been too busy of recent times to give tours of Growing Power, which he regularly did in the past. But today he took the time, and with Marna, Dawn and the D brothers, Dee and Dayday, of the DMZ I enjoyed another tour. Although I have taken the tour with Will many times before, each time I have learned something new from him or his staff and met some interesting persons. Today was no exception.

So today there were three kinds of stops, sudden senseless stops of a car, three prayer vigil stops for senseless homicides, and the natural stops to work in the garden or do another tour of Growing Power. Senseless stops of car or life are not natural. Stopping to work in the garden or to learn about growing power is natural.

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