Lightening - February 26, 2010

...the lights went out fast...except

for the lightening-the landscape

bulging forth like a quick

lesson in creation...

...it was hard to tell

fear from excitement:

...As always the body

wants to hide,

wants to flow toward it-strives

to balance while

fear shouts,

excitement shouts, back

and forth-each

bolt a burning river

tearing like escape through the dark

field of the other.

Okay, I admit it, I love "weather movies." Throughout the opening scenes my body is torn between fear and excitement, and when the storm seems suddenly upon us, them, me, all of us, there is a release of tension. There, in the dark of the storm, is perfection, a flowing, an escape from the cognitive brain wondering how we shall live. It is even more so in person. To view through the day the gathering clouds and to hear the rumble amidst the pecking of the key board as I tune into the latest storm tracker reports, there is a shameful joy - how can looming disaster be so much fun? Yet is not disaster upon us every day in one form or another, offering us a brilliant flash of joy if we could just live the beauty? Gods and goddesses throw bolts from upon high so that we might see the glory within and without.

What truths do you see in storms, in disasters, and in your fear?

A Letter From Home - January 4, 2010

She sends me news of bluejays, front,

Of stars and now the harvest moon

That rides above the stricken hills,

Lightly, she speaks of cold, of pain,

And lists what is already lost....

Here where my life seems hard and strange,

I read her wild excitement when

Stars climb, frost comes, and bluejays sing.

The broken year will make no change

Upon her wise and whirling heart:-

She know how people always plan

To live their lives, and never do.

She will not tell me if she cries...

Strange that there can be wild excitement in listing what is already lost. In this knowing of our true lives, as I look up at the stars in this cold January morning, I think of my father who died 20 years ago this season. He never told me if he cried, though I saw him once do so over the death of a woodpecker whose mate would not leave her side. I believe he cried for the plans he and the woodpeckers had made, for naught. I wonder though that if holding that list of disappointment if a heart beats in open wonder a ever growing list of abundance.