Two months later, what is the forest?

I have the news on in the background as I am editing the footage from my recent to trip to Minamisoma City, one of the many places so badly affected not only by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami but also the invisible threat of the radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Can it really be that two months have passed?

I have been so absorbed in the work I am doing to try to tell another piece of this story, to try to keep the story alive in the minds of people who are far away that this anniversary nearly slipped by without me noticing.

"Was it a case of not seeing the forest for the trees?" I ask myself. But then I quickly answer, "No, the two month anniversary was not a forest I could not see. It was just one of the trees among so many others."

"What is the forest, then?"

Each of the people I have met, the problems I have witnessed, the brokenness I have seen... each of these is a tree. The forest that they form is there, I know, but I am still unable to see it.

Perhaps it is true that I can not see the forest for the trees; for I am one of the trees and cannot yet see the forest in which I am.