Order in the Midst of Chaos

Okay, so I am contemplating ORDER in the midst of so much chaos. I mean really, how much more chaos can there be than to have your entire community nearly wiped out and everyone deeply affected by the backlash of an aftershock (seemingly an earthquake) that levies death, mass destruction and irrevocable psychological damage?


The first orderly thing I felt, was the hugs given to me by strangers. I cannot recall ever being held so securely for so long. They just held me and did not let go. In that moment, I began to feel some ORDER coming back. Of course I cried, but that felt exactly what was in ORDER to give me the impetus for the next event.

There was a nudging toward ORDER when I went into a store in Cromwell and the lady making copies for me of an essay written by Laura Mulvey that I was giving to my German friend overheard that I was from Christchurch. Yep, I had updated my status from immigrant to refugee by a natural cycle that had not been around for say 16,000 or 17,000 years, but then, some forms of ORDER take a long time to come through. I went to pay for my copies and she said no charge for that. My sense of ORDER began to come through, there is something to be said for being on the lamb from a heaving piece of earth you once called home. People often give you stuff, not because they have to, but because they want to let you know, there is still some ORDER left. Money is not high priority for the lady whose shop sign said “Going Out of Business”. She could relate entirely. I found ORDER in that, too.

Right now, I am well past ORDER and supposed to be into RESOLUTION, remembering I have allocated only one week per virtue, those weeks go by pretty fast in Christchurch, New Zealand in the midst of an earthquake/aftershock that requires some instantaneous thinking, like Malcolm Gladwell's Blink supersliced can mean the difference between 'being' or 'leaving' in the aftermath of chaos by a snap judgment that might lead to permanent resolution, might not...we shall see after at least a week's reflection...