And the raccoons looked up

The sun and the earth seem to have no regard for the end of the world. This morning is clear and the eastern sky turns from midnight blue to red and gold. I have seen this before, and it has always foretold the advance of light, the day. To see it as other than a semaphore from God would be to miss the point. To regard it as a message to the world would be to miss the point as well. Moses wore a veil among his people, but he removed it when he went in before his God. What can be shaken will be shaken, and removed – not, say I, from the world, for the world is not my business: I am in it, not of it. What can be shaken will be shaken, and what cannot be shaken, that alone shall remain in me and of me.

I have seen clouds looking like mountains, and, in the distance, I have seen the mountains and wondered if they were clouds. Not long ago a great storm passed to the south of me as the sun sank in the west and the last rays fell long upon the vast thunderhead. It towered above any earthly mountain, with its top sheered into an anvil, and thunder did sound like the boom of Thor’s hammer falling upon it, as lightning, like the sparks from the smith’s blow, flashed within.

The storm beat upon those beneath it. It was the shaker, and yet the shaken, for it passed on and was no more, a bubble, nothing more, a tool in the hand of God. That which could not be shaken remained.

The mountains remained, silent, dark, worn, and ancient.

Sunrise.