As I write this, what is left of Hurricane Henri has begun to pull out of our area and there are only some lingering on-and-off showers coming from a still-dark sky. In the distance to the west I can see peeks of whiter clouds and more light starting to push their way over the hills, trying to move the darkness out. They say we may see sunshine tomorrow. I sincerely hope so. We've all been holding our collective breath for the last two days and we all badly need to exhale now.
As I followed the weather reports on the storm, along with everyone else on the East Coast, I kept hearing them refer to "the eye of the storm," and where it was located at any given time. I can remember a hurricane we rode out back when I was a child and the moment when our location was in the eye of the storm. After what seemed like an endless barrage of rain and wind, it went very quiet. The sky took on an eerie, yellowish tint and the wind calmed down to a stiff breeze. My dad explained that this was the eye of the storm, the center, where the storm moved out from in a big circle. It was the calmest part of the hurricane.
With so much activity during this current hurricane season, that explanation has come back to me. It feels as if it is a perfect metaphor for all of the storms in our lives, especially with what is going on in the world at present. We all need to find our own center where we can calm down, take a breath, and look at where these storms may lead us if we don't make an effort to change course. Do we just let the storms continue to circle outward in a never-ending path of destruction, or do we do what we can, whatever we can, to change the course of the storm. Just like the cold front that is now coming in from the west, old Hurricane Henri is being pushed east and back out to sea, and by tomorrow, the sun will shine again.
The Native Americans have a saying: "even in nature, no storm lasts forever." Maybe all these storms are really Mother Nature reminding us that we need to find our center and figure out how to change the course of climate change, hatred, and division, and let it all blow out to sea while we still can.
And so it is.
