Blessing In a Storm

 

    Last night we had a storm, and I mean a STORM. We could see it coming-great dark clouds rolling across the dining room window with increasing thunder making a molto crescendo.  Then the lightning, such as I've never experienced before. Jagged rods of light dancing across an unsettled sky and accompanied by incessant, timpani-like booms.  Sideways rain pelted the windows and the thirsty earth slurped greedily.

    Dear Prudy huddled in my lap, shaking and panting, and independent Moxie was even glad to come in the house. The lights flickered once, twice, and then they were gone. 8:30 pm and complete darkness.  I was annoyed-me, in my safe, sturdy house was unable to go ahead with the evening's plans of reading and knitting. That annoyance should have turned to prayers for those not so lucky, don't you think?

    So, an early to bed. Prudy and I chose the downstairs guest room-cooler, I thought, while Bill braved the upstairs. Within a few minutes the house became stuffy and hot and I was sweating while simply lying on top of the covers. And here comes the blessing...I opened two windows, put my pillow on the floor underneath them, and felt a breeze. AND I was able to hear the tree frogs, owls and crickets, normally shut out by closed windows, air conditioning and fans. I basked in their happy, contented sounds and perhaps even learned a lesson from them.

    My story is a drop in the bucket compared to the numerous climate tragedies the world is experiencing this summer.  Are you scared? I am. Worry gnaws at me and my baby efforts seem to amount to nothing.

I fear for my grandchildren and all those of future generations. How about you?

Quiet Mystery

 The clouds and light this morning colluded to from this impressionistic photo of the Tuckahoe River.  It looks as if I've used some sort of filter or edit function, but I don't even know how to do that.  The photo describes how I've felt the past few months-murky, dark, the line between reality and fantasy unclear.  Every day a step out into a world in which I am a stranger.  Waiting, waiting.

Can it be that we will make it thru the pandemic? That we will go to the grocery without fear, sing together, hug our loved ones? Hope is drifting in around the edges-a quiet mystery that I feel it yet don't quite trust. The anxiety that waiting brings seems all the more intense.

And yes, there have been silver linings to this enforced time of isolation.  Less rushing, more time for reading and gardening, gentle evenings with my husband.  I want to carry these forward as we go back to "normal."

Our world is reeling from so much loss.   Let us practice compassion and work for the common good, sustained by what unites us.

Days pass when I forget the mystery

Problems insoluble and problems offering

their own ignored solutions

jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber

along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing

their colored clothes; cap and bells.

                     And then

once more the quiet mystery

is present to me, the throng's clamor

recedes: the mystery

that there is anything, anything at all,

let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,

rather than void: and that, O Lord,

Creator, Hallowed One, You still,

hour by hour sustain it.

                                           "Primary Wonder" by Denise Levertov