“Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.” ~ John Ruskin.

For those who love Jamaica, but who live in the diaspora, these past four weeks or so have been difficult.  While life goes on as usual, there is, always, at the back of one’s mind, at the corner of one’s eye, images of profound suffering that is ongoing in the parishes most affected by Hurricane Melissa.  Her devastation was absolute.  Winds were clocked at 252 mph.  Category 5 storms are said to have winds of ‘157 mph or higher’.  So she was in another category altogether.  In many communities all of the houses were either destroyed or roofless.  Vegetation was stripped and trees uprooted.  Roads were not just impassable due to debris, but in some remote areas the complete mountain road was washed away, leaving communities unreachable by car.

And yet, outside of the areas affected, life goes on.  While some areas are looking at a timeline of six months or more before electricity is restored, in other parts of the island life continues as normal.  While some of the homeless in school shelters are being given notice to find other accommodation to allow school to resume, others are living in one room of a damaged house, most of their belongings gone.  Many of us have donated or contributed in one form or another, but hear horror stories of relief supplies sitting at the wharf, backlogged, or not even making it to the island yet.  Thank goodness for those NGOs who are on the ground, handing out packages, cooking hot meals, erecting temporary shelters.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, nature unleashes even more horror, takes even more lives.

With the Holiday season upon us, there is a tinge of guilt behind the celebrations.  Should we deprive ourselves of life’s conveniences and pleasures while others suffer?  But how does that help the affected?  I ran across the phrase ‘Duty of Delight’ in a poem, and decided to research the person who first coined the phrase.  John Ruskin, a 19^th century British historian, art critic, draftsman, writer and lecturer, was writing in a time when the emphasis was on self-denial.  He wrote that we should instead be mindful of all of the glory of the natural world, that it was our duty to find delight in an appreciation of art, of beauty.

I am one of those people (a large group, I am sure) who delight in the glorious skies seen at sunrise and sunset.  In fact, I have to laugh when someone who knows me says ‘See your sunset there!’.  Birds also distract me, causing me to stop and try to find where they are calling from, or what kind of bird they are.  ‘There goes your pelican!’  Yes, somehow, all of these things are mine! When I am in a mountainous landscape my eyes are drawn to their ridges.  I will have to stop, stare, and breathe in the scenery, feeling protected by their height, their strength, their constancy. And when I am back in South Florida, a place where the only hills are manmade and full of trash, I turn cloudscapes into my personal canvas, or, on rainy days, pretend that the mountains are hidden by banks of dark clouds.

So, I think I am fulfilling my duty of delight! Friends I follow on Facebook who have been affected by the hurricane, can still be reassured by the sprouting of green after the brownness of destruction.  A friend whose tourist spot (a garden and gallery) has been severely impacted, found herself inundated with swarms of hungry hummingbirds.  Normally she has a handful of named visitors (Leroy and Rocky are two of the long-tailed streamers that I remember), along with a few of other varieties. She hangs feeders of sugar water, and tourists can have the pleasure of holding tiny feeders while the tiny birds perch on their fingers to feed.  With the devastation and loss of flowers after the storm, her garden became a haven for the hungry and the homeless.  Her video showed dozens of birds swarming her feeders like big, angry bees, or like the hurricane survivors themselves, reaching for food packages.

Providing sustenance for a day is one thing, restoring a sustainable lifestyle is another.  Those who visit the disaster zones come back traumatized, so imagine the long-term consequences for those who are going through it.  Mental health, already a stigmatized class of healthcare, is going to need maximum support beyond the physical and structural needs of the people, and we can only hope that there will be a plan for this.

While Jamaica recovers from the hurricane, those of us living in the US are living through a storm of our own, in this case, one that is man-made.  There are so many things to be appalled/shocked/traumatized by, it is hard to know where to start.  From seeing human beings bombed out of the water, to hearing human beings being called garbage; from seeing drastic increases in health insurance premiums to cuts in nutrition benefits for children; from seeing brutal and violent abductions by masked men of mothers and nurses to watching corrupt acts by some of the richest men in the US; it is hard to know which act to focus on.  And mind you, these are only some of the violations that I have listed, not to mention those things not uncovered by a battered and restricted ‘free’ press.

While horrified, shocked, appalled and eventually numbed by all of the news, I turn back to Mother Nature, in her many moods, to restore my faith in the constancy of the natural world.  A sun which rises (or an earth which turns); a moon which goes from a silver orb to a sliver of a crescent in 28 day cycles; planets and stars which live longer than time itself.  And remind myself that this too, will pass.

On this Friday morning, may you find time to delight in something beautiful today, whether it is the sound of a grandchild’s laughter, or the sight of a butterfly living its best life. The duty of delight is one of the easiest of duties to satisfy!

Have a wonderful weekend, Family!

One Love!

Namaste.