vertigo...

It's a condition, a U2 song and a word that jumped out from my required reading this week ("The Millenium Matrix" by M. Rex Miller):

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Certain conditions or dynamics are known to induce vertigo: Fatigue slows the cognitive process and leaves people or institutions vulnerable to disorientation. Moving too quickly seems to upset the body's balance mechanisms and leads to coriolis vertigo (disorientation associated with operating physically free from the earth's movement). Pilots know that anytime they experience a loss of horizon (such as when flying at night or in clouds), they are in danger of vertigo. Too much noise and vibration in the environment creates a mental overload, which very often leads to vertigo. Finally, fixating on a particular item or issue can cause one to eliminate or deny other essential information and thereby lose the panoramic command of the environment.

Those suffering vertigo lose all sense of vertical and horizontal orientation; they literally lose their alignment to, and placement in, the real world. Pilots suffering vertigo have flown their planes full throttle into the earth.

Because it represents the tyranny of the subjective, the only effective recovery from vertigo is an absolute, resolute, focused reliance on objective reality (such as an airplane instrument panel).
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It's also an interesting metaphor for my life at the moment. Over these weeks I have Jumped from world to world, familiar to strange, known to unknown... It's some days very hard for me to determine what is real... What is true horizon... What is safe to focus on.

But I know it's there...

:: "We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." - C.S. Lewis