RESTORE RESTORETH RESTORATION

"...shepherd...I shall...want...to lie down in green pastures...still waters...
restoreth my soul...righteousness...fear no evil...art with me...
a table before me...my cup runneth over...goodness and mercy...
all the days of my life...forever.                                
                                                                excerpts from Psalm Twenty-three

(Caution if you are squeamish!)
My left big toenail and the second toenail of my right foot are growing back--after falling off.  First the toes were injured.  Then they were infected, sore and fragile.  Black.  Soon the nails were dead.  Now they are growing back.  It's amazing, isn't it, the way the body restoreth itself.   I've been wearing a band-aid on the big toe since early July...so I've had a summer of unfortunate pedicurial realities to endure.  Not an earth-shaking inconvenience...I wouldn't even mention it except...
Last evening, in the middle of a luxurious mountain pine-scented bubble bath, I looked at that offending/offensive toenail...and noticed that it is actually restoring itself, reproducing those peculiar cells.  And, I began to wax semi-poetic and philosophic about the way in which virtually everything works; about how things begin and how they are affected by other things or events and how they respond to those events or things and what the various effects and outcomes are and how...just how, things are restored.

I believe that I, we, you, he, she, it, they shall be restored.

There is a desire for order in the universe...I think.  And it all seems so alternately mysterious and predictable.  I am thinking about those tests in which one is asked to predict the next number in a series of numbers.  But how can one answer accurately without considering how at that next number perhaps the whole pattern would change and the series would have to be reconsidered and reconfigured from the point of the next unexpected number.
I wait, and I search while waiting, for the next expected or unexpected number or incident or accident or event.  And I wonder if there is something that should be--or might be--observing me and wondering or predicting just what to expect with my next move or accident...Probably not.  And yet...I muse on...
YES!
"Re" is such a wonderful suffix.  So forgiving.  Restore.  Revive.  Rework.  Rearrange.  Re-evaluate.  Re-energize.  Remember.  Revisit.  Relive.  Relieve.  Resuscitate.  Resurrect.  Resume...
Restore order...in the court of public opinion.  Restore our faith in humanity.  Restore a sense of optimism in the land---across the land.  Restore confidence in the future...That's what I am struggling to do.  Confidence in my future and yours and ours...Restore a sense of community, a sense of purpose, a sense of goodness...
Restore our collective pride in our family, home, neighborhood, town, city, country, world...a sense of cooperation.  Restore our trust in our neighbors, our laws, our leaders.
We are weary from the erosion of so many valuable things in our lives--in the environment, of course...but even more so in our values...
My father lived by the saying "My word is my bond."  It was his truth.  We could rely on his word.  He valued it.  We valued it.  Today?  "Sorry Sir, we don't take words for bonds.  We're going to need to see some collateral."  Collateral.  My collateral has been damaged...I only have my word.  Of course they're going to need to see some collateral.  Because Trust is gone.  It has no value in today's world. 

But...couldn't it be re-built? Couldn't we realize that it was injured.  That it was sore and that it got infected?  And that it is fragile...Isn't it possible to realize that there is in Nature (including Human Nature) a force to restore.   Let the land lie fallow so that it will be restored so that it can hold and nurture and nourish that which is planted in it...

What do we as a PEOPLE value today?  What did we value that we now have lost?  Do we want to reclaim it?  How do we reclaim it, given that we've done what we've done and are where we are?

                    "I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought
                      with the atomic bomb.  Perhaps two thirds of the people of the earth
                      might be killed, but enough men (and women, I add) capable of thinking,
                      and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be

               restored."
                                                                                               Albert Einstein, 1945