When I roll and toss my way through sleep most nights, I am not worrying about today as much as I sometimes fear tomorrow, how to prepare for the next storm before I understand the new one.

Our civic life in America has changed but barely changed its official structure in nearly 300 years, and that is called peace and holy tradition. “At the same time, writes Spiritual Philosopher Joan Chittister, “we never forget – if we ever knew it – that peace is not a state of lifelessness and life is not a lily pond, it is a bay inside an ocean.”

Our President is riding a wave of change, and I don’t want to drown in anger and hatred.

Every new storm brings a new set of circumstances and fears to consider. As a former political journalist, I failed to prepare myself or anyone else for the coming storm, and neither did my embarrassed former colleagues. I wasn’t ready, but I am busy getting ready now with my Sanctuary Blog and some first-class reading and meditation. I want space and time to sort it out quietly. I’d love it if people of good faith wish to join me here on this blog I created years ago.

People keep asking me, “What were they thinking?”   Perhaps we all must find the answer rather than ask the question.

A Sanctuary Blog is not about significant change. It’s about standing still in a torrent of change, looking at the dogs and flowers, and figuring out what comes next. It’s like a private club for people who need to escape the noise and remember what it means to be peaceful and sleep.

There will always be change, and while this turmoil is unnerving and keeping us up at night. I won’t insist on missing yesterday when today has swept it away like leaves in Autumn. Yesterday no longer exists.

In my often agitated sleep, I know I do not have the luxury of running away. I cannot, and won’t, ignore what’s going on as if it were someone else’s problem. My Uncle Harry used to look me right in the eye when he told me that one Jew’s problem was every Jew’s problem.

I didn’t know what he was talking about. I’m getting there.

Much of the fear and angst sweeping the country is about this. We know it will take its toll on us. Clinging to the past is not a matter now; there is only a present in the sense of an Angry Revolution or civic breakdown. I call it a Spiritual Tsunami.

In her writing about change, Chittister reminds me that furious winds and giant storms freshen life and threaten to swamp it. Humans are not creatures who embrace significant change. They often demand it without quite knowing what it can mean.

Everything is changing too fast to keep up with. People seem to want a change, and they are getting one. I often remember this when I watch the familiar be pushed away. It’s not my problem; it’s everyone’s problem.

I know that the future has not made itself apparent. I don’t intend to unthinkingly resist change until the world no longer notices that I’m still here. I was too arrogant to notice the significant change, but I see it now.

I can’t see where this ends up, and that has kept me up once or twice. However, I am settling down and in a good place.

For me, it’s a choice whether or not to run the risk in my old age of becoming part of a new, stunned, but mushrooming culture forming that is also losing sleep over how to deal with a society sweeping past me and wondering how to regain its balance in a Tsunami of significant proportions. I hope the blog is a peaceful and safe place to begin the difficult challenge of sorting out our great mess.

But then I remembered what was essential: Everything new is not the end of the world. Quite often, it signals the beginning.