This Week Was Supposed to be Order

Not sure if my friend Ben ever experienced an earthquake (aftershock for those who adhere to political correctness) during the week he was contemplating ORDER.  But, this week I have been doing both. The outstanding irony is that my book for this contemplation project is still lying in a heap after the aftershock that felt more like an atomic bomb, hit Christchurch, New Zealand on February 22, 2011.  I gave up on some types of order that day, but there are certainly others I have been embracing wholeheartedly.

Interestingly, my first memory of the word ORDER is as a small child mimicking what must be some metaphysical rrhythmic sound bit to stick in my childish head to provoke me to yell on the school playground, "Order, order, order in the court!"  I was never sure what ORDER the court was seeking, or what the court was, I simply knew that silence followed and silence was the contemplation for last week.  So, does this mean I am going backwards?  Don't we all wish we could go backwards on some days?

Sadly, we can't.

For those of us living through these past five months in Christchurch, New Zealand...ORDER means trying to find meaning in our lives on the backside of a major earthquake on September 4th, 2010 with not one death, 4,000 aftershocks later with one more event on February 22, 2011 that appears to remove permanently, any semblance of ORDER for Christchurch.  Many people are dead and much of the iconic landscape is gone forever.  But ORDER...ORDER is still here and ever more necessary to contemplate and that is why Clark, Clive and I are leaving for a few days to collect ourselves, contemplate what needs to be done and then... come back and help rebuild Christchurch one brick at a time.

I think my friend Ben would approve of us taking a few days off to contemplate ORDER before we begin.