Oklahoma, We Love You

Thunderstorms rolled through SE Florida last night,  with lightening coming so fast there were no pauses in thunder.  I sat with miraculous electricity still on and watched the news from Oklahoma, feeling a surreal tie between us through the weather systems of the south.  When I was a little girl,  I distinctly remember hunkering down in the family room of our suburban Pittsburgh house while storms raged outside;  I watched out the back window as the winds whipped everything around,  only to find out the next day our entire area was hit by tornadoes.   The next day, my Dad packed us in the car and we drove around to see the destruction- not nearly as devastating- through the tisk-tisking from my Mom,  me in the back seat quiet and still. 

All that was in me last night;  Wilma crashing around us in 2005.  The '500 year' floods in the Valley that washed away my cars,  and crashed through the Barn and lowlands....I have had my share of Mother Nature writ large. 

I didn't expect to run today.  But when I suddenly woke just after 7AM,  I saw a break in the clouds and an early sun mixing the blues and greys with a soft orange hue.  Packing my phone in a plastic zip belt,  I warmed up past the park with floods of standing water attracting the water birds on the morning hunt.    Getting into my low gear,  I headed through the trailer park and rounded out on Ravenswood,  a nice gait in the coolish air.  I thought about all those storms, and cries and people who woke up one morning for school, or work or shopping- and never made it home that night.   There is no way we can 'see' why some of us survive the Storms of Life and others do not.  But those of us who are left behind are clearly meant to give comfort and witness.   Do what you can for all those who are swept into the matrix of Mother's great shift...She will not go quietly into Her new world.  It will take much to make the change in our hearts, and in how we treat Her, and each other.  But we can start now- today.