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Hurricane ... is it better or worse to live where tornadoes can pop up unexpectedly, or where you have constant, oppressive threat of hurricanes?

I am discovering that no matter how much I think I am "getting it together," with Hurricane Ike breathing down our necks "it", whatever it is, is rapidly scattering to the winds, leaving a feeling like my heart has dropped into my feet and by throat is dry and my brain (if I have one) is running at 3000 rpm accomplishing nothing.

I know that it is only Friday, and the storm is predicted to hit us Wednesday, and that it can possibly change course between now and then, but as of this morning we are looking at a category 3 or 4 hurricane passing as close as 50 miles to us. We survived Hurricane Wilma, with about $15K damages, but who knows what this one could do ...

Since Peg is a public health nurse, we are obligated to go to the "special needs" shelter, which has been set up in a high school over an hour's drive from here. During Wilma it was a real nightmare scene, with the water flooding the places where we had patients and the food supply non-existent. And I don't know what's worse -- being in that shelter, or driving home afterwards wondering if our home will still be standing and habitable. I know, it's just "things," but confound it, these "things" are important to us.

Anyway, I am geting the message: Art, you are kidding yourself about being any distance along a spiritual path at all. When the chips are down, you panic.

Oh, well. Being the deist I have become, I don't expect God to intervene for me; but I can hope he'll intervene for all of us and let this storm die before it reaches us.

Think abourt us in the next few days.

Namaste
Art

Have already thought of you w4tvq, and will continue. I don't think it would be a normal response to not be scared of a hurricane heading your way. I'm praying for you and your wife's safety, as well as all the others living there. Hope this one decides to make a turn away from land.
Jen

Anyway, I am getting the message: Art, you are kidding yourself about being any distance along a spiritual path at all. When the chips are down, you panic.

Art, jenjulian is quite right. Don't judge yourself so harshly; heck, don't judge yourself at all. You don't have the perspective to judge yourself. Leave that to God. You don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going, you don't really even know where you are. None of us does. That's the whole point, isn't it. The key here is not to become "more spiritual" but to become more comfortable with simply being what we are.

Thus, when a hurricane comes, scream bloody murder, and run for cover. When it's gone by, return home. If your home is struck, sit down in the mud, scream again, cry some, and then rebuild it as best you can. If it has not been struck, breathe a sigh of relief, and help your neighbors fix homes that have been struck.

Many years ago on this path, while walking through the woods, I wiped aside a spider web that was in my way. An hour or so later, returning home, I came upon the same spot to find the spider busily rebuilding the web.

I think the function of the spiritual process is to make us more like the spider. Not that we are not affected by the world, but that we express the effects in a normal human manner (scream, cry, laugh), and then walk on. It's the hanging on to these kinds of events that enables them to eat away at us.

I have no reason to think that the great saints in all the traditions who have been martyred in awful ways, did not feel ... and fear ... the pain they endured. The difference was, I think, that they remembered who they were, who their tormentors were, even in their fear and pain.

So, if/when Ike hits, curse God. Scream aloud, "Why this! Why me?" Don't keep your fear and anger and frustration inside, and most of all don't judge it. Instead, give all your fear and anger and frustration to God. Not with guilt, but with enthusiasm. Throw it at Him! Then, later, when the dust has settled, thank Him for being there to take all that stuff from you, and ask for help in restoring whatever Ike broke. In a word, bring God directly and immediately and totally and unreservedly into your life precisely as you are experiencing it -- unedited. Isn't that what "being spiritual" really means?

I guess what I am saying is, Don't try to be something you are not, and, most of all, don't berate yourself for not being what you think you ought to be. Leave all that stuff to God, who is far better at it than we. Instead, put all your energy into being whatever it is you are right now, and make God an indelible aspect of that.

And, yes, of course, you are in our thoughts and prayers. Whether or not Ike strikes.

The good news is that, at last advisory from NOAA, the storm is going to pass by us over 200 miles away, so we will hve rain, and wind, but probably will not have to go to a shelter or lose power for any extended period of time.

The scare was good for me, though. Interestingly, in the midst of it, my morning reading from "Forward Day by Day" quoted Jeremiah (15:15-21) in which the prophet is complaining to God: "Truly you are to me like a deceiftul brook, like waters that fail." Even prophets get irritated at God's ways. I know i do. And i say so. and He doesn't seem to mind at all. No lightning bolts have zapped me yet, nor will they.

What i am finding is just what Anna suggests ... that the infinite, universal Mind is inacceessible, to be sure,but makes itelf accessible in some way. I find, to my surprise, that having started attending the Episcopal Church again (it was where I grew up), I am re-establishing contact with that "local" accessible God. Somehow, that Presence is there, sigified by the while candle burning always near the altar and implied in the words "this is my body." And I choose, for now, not to pursue any "why" questions about it.

Jai Ram
Art