It’s hot here in Florida so I am thinking of something cool.  Alaska!  Ten years ago Steve and I traveled with good friends John & Susan to Alaska on a Celebrity cruise.  A National Park Service naturalist described for us in great detail the formation and movement of glaciers across mountains.  It made such an impression that I felt inspired to write a poem about it.  Whether one stands alone or joins with others, never doubt the power of One.

Strength to Shape a Mountain
(Reflection after Glacier Bay National Park naturalist’s talk)

It starts with one,
Six-pointed, crystalline, clear
Snowflake,
Which could melt on my tongue,
Or mesmerize on my windowpane,
Or join its sisters in the contours of a snow angel,
Or rest in the crevasse of an Alaskan mountain range named Fairweather,

Where by locking its crystal form into trillions of other snowflakes
And bonding its frozen liquid to form one solid river of blue ice—
So heavy it flows on its super-heated base of energy—
Over the granite walls of a mountain,
Scouring,
Pushing,
Pulverizing,
Carving,
The power of one single snowflake
Will shape a mountain into something new.

© Janice Shull; written aboard the MS Volendam, August 15, 2008

The day began thirty minutes earlier than usual, but that was according to plan.  Steve had an important medical appointment at 8 a.m., which is very early for him.  Always slow to wake up, on this morning I could see his sluggish movements and his brain fog.  He made an almost superhuman effort (for him) to get up and dress and come to the table for breakfast.  When I checked his blood sugar I knew right away why he had struggled so—it was dangerously low.  Still, he was lucid and able to drink orange juice and chew two glucose tablets.  As he began to revive I asked him if I should cancel his appointment.  It would mean changing three additional appointments and postponing an important procedure, but it could be done.  “No, let’s go,” he said, and so we did, arriving right on time at 8 a.m.  All according to plan.

The office door was locked no matter how much we jiggled the handle and pounded on the door.  No one was there.  I began to make phone calls to try to figure out what was going on and what we should do.  No one answered my phone calls and I left three voice messages, hoping someone would call back quickly.  At 8:40 a woman walked up to the door and unlocked it.  After confirming that we were in the right place, she checked and said she had no appointment scheduled for us and worse, the doctor was working that day in an office thirty miles away.  We left with yet another phone number to call to try to figure out what we could do.  The timing on this appointment was crucial and we had done our part, but the plan had changed somewhere beyond my control.

I drove home with a swirl of emotion around me:  disappointment, anger, confusion, worry.  It was then that I remembered a word that covered it all:  I was feeling gabrified.

My grandmother used this word to describe the feeling of becoming unnerved when her plans changed unexpectedly.  The word is Hindi in origin and she had assimilated the word into her vocabulary while living in colonial India.  A good English equivalent is the word “discombobulated,” but in this case “gabrified” seemed to fit perfectly with my feeling of powerlessness.  Someone else would have to fix this problem.

And someone else did.  Within an hour we had a new appointment for later that afternoon.  The crucial time element was respected by the medical staff.  I was off the hook for changing all those other appointments.  Still, the gabrified feeling lingered awhile.  We humans resist being powerless in the face of changing events and when we are it takes awhile to find our bearings.

My disturbed feeling had something to do with the approaching anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and memories of the time when I felt most gabrified.  I had not caused that utter upheaval (the levee system failure had, but that’s another story), and yet it changed my life, plunging me into months of those same swirling emotions and a sense of being adrift in unfamiliar waters.  Steve and I labored to put those feelings behind us and learn to trust again in our ability to plan and move forward.

From extreme weather to extreme politics, gabrified might be a good name for the state of our national psyche at the moment.  Just when I think I have a handle on the personalities and events of the day, a breaking news banner introduces another element, another crisis, another tweet.  Powerless is how I feel, and angry and worried and disgusted and confused.  Gabrified.

I choose another word, however.  Determined!  In God’s good and orderly creation I believe that we are granted the ability to regain our footing and reclaim our power.  I am determined to read and study about solutions to current problems.  I am determined to work with others to find ways that heal our world rather than hurt.  I am determined to vote for those who think forward rather than backward.

At times it takes great effort to shift from feeling gabrified to being determined.  And then at other times it requires only time and trust.  Reinhold Niebuhr’s beloved prayer might help:

God grant me
Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

Share your thoughts about a time when you felt gabrified in the Comments below.