Becoming a boat

At 3 am this morning I woke to find the bed shaking and the paintings on the wall above the dresser rattling.  Yes, it was an earthquake, though relatively mild (4.0) and several miles away, in the little town of Seabeck.

And my first thought, once things settled down, was "we need to make sure we have earthquake insurance." It was something that I'd thought briefly the last time our homeowners insurance docs came through -- for all my supposed intelligence, I couldn't tell, reading through them, if we were covered or not: something about exclusions...

Anyway -- it occurred to me this morning, as I looked at this wonderful image I'd already planned to post today, that boats are built to rock and roll and houses are not.  And though I prefer living in a house to living on a boat -- I do like the sense of steadiness and safety a home provides -- it seems to me that the way to survive life's ups and downs is to BE a boat, not a house: to be flexible, easy; to be willing and ready to roll with the waves rather than cracking and falling when your foundations start to shift.

But perhaps it's really the fact that my foundations have already shifted -- with some of the traumatic events of my life -- and that's helped teach me to become more of a boat? Which means it may be a bit of a chicken and egg problem. I do remember feeling, though I'm now quite firmly anchored, as if I'd been set adrift.  Things were certainly rocky for a while there; it took a while to get my sea legs in this new theological adventure...