Moments of the Ordinary

and the Mystery

Jul 10, 2025

I’m staying on Cape Cod for 6 weeks this summer, a guest in my generous besties’ beautiful home. My daughter is lifeguarding at the beach club nearby.

(Yes she passed the Red Cross certification in Texas and open water training in Massachusetts! “Stop acting so shocked,” she says).

And in our first week here, on July 4, we got the news of the unfolding tragedy on the Guadalupe River. Hearing the name Camp Mystic and knowing the area and so many who attended or were counselors at those camps over the years, I text people to see what they know. Several say they were watching the live feed and it is terrible. “There are girls missing” they both said.

I drink a glass of wine before we left for our party and I decided not to mention it to anyone but social media being what it is, my daughter had already seen.

We spent 20 years going to our family river house nearby in Utopia and weathering the flooded out roads that sometimes trapped us for an extra couple of days before we could drive back to our regular lives.

Like you, I found it hard to breathe for a few days as the news rolled in. Sunday morning, I went to a church service at the Episcopal church, St. Andrew’s that is near us in Hyannisport. It was built in 1904 and reminds me of my childhood church. Simple, with its stained glass windows open to let in the sea air.

My takeaway from the service (besides the comfort of tradition) was a phrase the minister kept using. He mentioned our relationship with the divine mystery.

And I realized, that’s all that comforts me when things in the world or in my life and family feel their most unreasonable and tragic. Relationships to dear friends, family of origin, my daughter and husband, extended family, Joy Boots community, and ultimately, my own relationship to the Divine Mystery.

Which is another way of saying: I don’t understand much of anything about the capriciousness of life. Who gets to live and who dies. Who enjoys prosperity or power and who struggles to have food for their children. Who is shuttled into a concentration camp called Alligator Alcatraz, having never committed a crime as others laugh and buy merch.

Whose house stands, while another is swept away.

Human motivation is a mystery to me and so is Nature.

The shock of hearing of an incipient tragedy and the agony of waiting as it unfolds brings horror and grief. Understanding the magnitude and the ripples of people it will touch and and hurt is overwhelming. We saw the father from Beaumont search for his young adult children. He was talking to them on the phone and then they were washed away. Three young, shining faces and a father ceaselessly searching, calling their names. Remaining in the search and the call because to stop means to confront the reality that they are really gone. As torturous as the ceaseless frantic search is, stopping is way worse.

During moments of acute danger or tragedy, many of us freeze inside. I felt the freezing as my sister told me she was watching the livestream of rescues early on July 4. I couldn’t look any more after hearing little girls were missing. I know that area. I know what it means when people say children are missing.

People don’t remain missing for that long in that area during a flood and then are found alive.

The thing is, the water is still rising and until it begins to ebb, they won’t find everyone.

The horror of the no warning.

The horror of hearing the girls were sleeping feet from the river.

The horror of hearing reporters call out questions about why they were no warnings only to have the police shut down questions and bark at the reporters that they can’t speak to what went wrong until the missing girls are reunited with their families.

And we all know they are dead.

And we know these men on the news supported the people and policies that destroyed the systems we humans count on for our safety.

If they will let those girls die, they will let anyone die. If they wouldn’t rescue children in Uvalde, you can bet they aren’t going to help you.

The public systems are being defunded and dismantled: public schools, healthcare, national weather service, community based policing. There are people getting richer off of primitive anger, firearms, and detention centers.

It helps me to remember that, nevertheless, I have a relationship with the mystery of the divine. With the way love and joy and sacred, beautiful moments can emerge in life and how lucky I am to be able to gather with others in so many of these moments and be aware of them. These relationships and these moments where I can feel grateful and aware, are my truest riches.

Every day that I’m here on the Cape, I take a long walk and then, hot and sticky, I swim in the Atlantic. The water is mostly clear and not too cold for a Texas girl. I float and swim and recite my Song of the Soul mantra while I let GAIA hold me. She holds me as I float and she holds me as I walk in the soft sand, my feet sinking. I allow my mind to be so free, so relaxed, and think of nothing. Eventually I spot a shell or two, my treasures for the day. A theme in the treasures becomes apparent most days.

Texture catches my eye. Is it smooth? Are there several which are the same size and color, no imperfections in their bit of scrap?

Today I found the smoothest, softest feeling white triangle of shell and then immediately my eye caught another that miraculously seemed to be the same size, shape and smoothness!

I was very self satisfied with my find and imagined telling you how in this blog how it transpires. How a theme emerges that I don’t look for but discover. And then I rub the 2 small smooth pieces with my fingers as I get ready to walk up the stairs back to where I’m staying.

But as I turn, the wind gusts and my hand extends and one of the perfect pieces is lost. And as much as I want to dwell in the mystery of how things change, and being open to it all, when that other shell that fits so perfectly has disappeared, I feel truly sad.

I start looking for it, searching . And every piece looks like it might be it, but it isn’t. And then I see a few other pieces, and I pick them up and they are not the same perfection of size and smoothness I’d been enjoying. But they are ok and fit well enough and I pick up 3 or 4 as I search and then take these lesser ones back with me and put them in my rows of everyday treasures.

The lesson of impermanence is all around me. It’s in the sand, in the waves and tides, the shifting of the beds of seaweed, the ups and downs of my teenage daughter’s mood, the revelations of joy and shared sorrow in my long chats with my dear friend and hostess Alexandra Taber.

Yes, everything is impermanent. And also, it’s very sad. It is at once so very sad and what gives meaning and beauty to the ordinary if you can see it.