Caves

I think the internet gives you a kind of radar or spider's web vibration on your friends. There are friends I hear from from time to time and some I hear from more regularly and you kind of get a feeling for when that frequency gets disturbed.

I know if I don't hear from Sleepy for a couple of days that the most likely explanation is that she's gone rural.
Not hearing from another friend for a couple of days though got me anxious and when I checked she was on her back in hospital.
Another friend that I don't hear from regularly, but expect to at certain times had also gone quiet and that also turned out to be a worry well-founded as his mother has died suddenly.

Those times you want to be there for your friends and yet can't but then it isn't about me, those are times that each of us has to deal with according to our own feelings, sometimes we just need to go into our cave and be still. The knowledge of connection and prayer may be all that those of us on the outside can offer.

Yesterday we watched the episode on Caves from 'Planet Earth'. This was spectacular and although many of the scenes in this series make you wish you could see the places yourself, not so with caves. The camera people went down there so that we don't have to. And there were some breathtaking scenes. The Lechuguilla cave system in the States has the most spectacular crystal formations of any known cave system. The BBC were the first team to be allowed to take a camera crane down into the caves to film and they will be the last to film down there since no further permission will be given in order to maintain the caves in their natural state.
The BBC team squeezed their bodies and film equipment through spaces so small that it made me feel claustrophobic just to watch. They also negotiated underwater caves in Patagonia (I think) and there the fear was that the breathing equipment could get damaged and they would be fatally trapped.