Quaking

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, I was stirred awake by the tremors of an earthquake. 

Registering 4.2 on the Richter scale, the rumble's locus was about 10 miles off the coast of Malibu, causing much of Southern California to shimmy. It was as if a giant had suddenly shrugged his shoulders.

I was not particularly startled by this modest heaving, an earthen growing pain of sorts. But perhaps creation is sending us a more pointed message. In a week that saw three mass shootings here in "The Golden State," maybe we need something to literally shake us awake, deaf to the pain and hatred that surrounds us. 

If the sun-kissed beaches of our shoreline are fodder for upheaval, perhaps we are all more fragile than we thought...

"It is the nature of the earth to shift. It is the nature of fragile things to break." - Susan Meissner