In fifteen minutes, or for some of us less, we left it all behind. For the sake of life, for the sake of survival, we left it all behind. Most of us, but not all of us, were able to go back to our smoke-steeped houses in a week or ten days. But on that first night it was the same for all of us: we didn't know if we would have a home to go home to. On that first night, we experienced letting go and leaving behind. With lech lecha in our ears, we grabbed those few things, threw them in the car, and hit the gas pedal into the Unknown.

This will be the place where we will return to the earth, where we will be visited and remembered, and our physical selves carried forward in the grass and the Gravensteins – a tree whose very name means gravestone.

I watched all their faces poking out of the surface of the water. There was laughter and giddiness. There were also tears. There was surprise at the depth and surprise at the temperature and surprise at how much we all needed to be right there in that moment. But then we climbed out.

Holy silence, to be holy, must be held that way. It can't be a silence of indifference. Or a silence of capitulation. It can't be a silence that is simply an absence.