Mercy, Mercy, Mercy

The tide level this morning was predicted to be 13 feet (about as high as it gets around here) and the barometer was low and getting lower, so 11:00 last night found us out on the beach, me holding open the plastic sandbags and my husband shoveling in the sand, tying them off, and carrying them through the dunegrass to stack them in front of the garage.

So when I looked out the window this morning I was almost disappointed to see that, though the water was over the road, it barely touched the driveway; clearly the barometer had risen again during the night.

And it struck me then -- how much of our lives we spend fortifying ourselves against anticipated emergencies, when in fact, like the attack of 9/11 or the shootings in Connecticut on Friday, disaster almost always catches us unprepared, and when we least expect it.

It seems to me that the thoughts that seem to constantly cycle through our minds are mostly of the fortification variety.  When, I wonder, will we learn to turn that constant sandbagging off?

Thinking of that this morning, I kept hearing the words of jazz saxophonist Cannonball Adderly, during one of his performances of "Mercy, Mercy:" "Sometimes we are not prepared for adversity. When it happens sometimes, we're caught short. We don't know exactly how to handle it when it comes up.  Sometimes we don't know just what to do when adversity takes over, and I have advice for all of us. I got it from my pianist, Joe Zawinul, who wrote this tune. And it sounds like what you're supposed to say when you have that kind of problem. It's called Mercy, Mercy, Mercy." You can listen to him here: