Storm Warnings

Weathering the storm might be easy when distant early warning signals and reporters tell us a storm is imminent. A storm 

that will take down power lines and phone lines and any lines of communication frightening us in an attempt to warn us. 

But if we listen and do what the birds do, we will hunker down and find safety before listening to weather reports

with their amazing virtual cloud maps of raindrops and wind sketches, snow flakes and jagged slashes of lightening. 

Whether we choose to pay attention and gather up protection in time can make weathering a storm difficult - or easy - well relatively easy. If the storm is only a big  - but short - blow hard 

with slashing rain or sleety icy snow we can curl up in a big - and dry - comfy chair with a good book or a warm blanket to crochet 

and just have a cup of tea while the angry storm rages 

outside. If the storm catches us on a highway, 

driving directly into it, we will just have to white knuckle the steering wheel that wants to spin out of control and keep our foot on the gas. 

Weathering a storm that sneaks up and smacks us down 

before we can cover our heads, get our gear for all weathering 

or dive into the house is survival at it’s most critical. 

We may not know what gear we need, where shelter is to protect us 

from weather that seems super human ~ ready to fight all comers.

With weather like that I become a tiny human being fighting 

a blown up Hulk all green and puffed up with muscles that frighten me! Can you imagine how small a child feels when the thunder rolls and the lightening splashes and slashes across the sky. I can - sort of - because my dad showed me thunder clouds, and lightning and told me how far away a storm was by the lightening strikes. He taught weather and storm so it wasn’t big and scary but amazing and beautiful. But weathering any storm is possible even in David and Goliath situations if we choose the right spot, roll out of the way like a ninja or just go to ground and pretend we are dead hoping to fool the monstrous storm so it rages off and picks on something it’s own size - like a mountain or the middle of an ocean. 

Weathering a storm does not depend on 

academic degrees or financial portfolios 

but depends on a degree of common sense and 

knowing the value of nickels and dimes to use 

when a storm shows up - announced or unannounced. 

Weathering a storm you may be by yourself but 

if in a community of any size at all then holding hands and sharing hope, shelter, water and food will show that together we can all survive unless of course in sadness because some will succumb - and then we share their grief. And if we pay attention we will learn that weathering any storm has planted many seeds - watered them ferociously while stirring the earth and our hearts and when the storm passes we have already grown new spaces in our hearts.

“A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.”

~ Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way