Stirring the Pot

"Are we ready now to admit that by tampering with weather we have been poking the hornet’s nest, even while breeding, in our hubris, ever larger and more venomous hornets?"

Great storms return us, briefly, to the respect we once held for nature’s power over us. They remind us that we are really very small.

The largest of these shake the earth, change wide boulevards to waterways, behead or topple our buildings, and wail at us as we hide in cave-like shelters, cowering in fear.

After experiencing such a fright do we still imagine that as God’s chosen species we shall soon subdue and tame all this? Do we expect some wise authority figure to step in and just fix it? Or are we ready now to admit that by tampering with weather we have been poking the hornet’s nest, even while breeding, in our hubris, ever larger and more venomous hornets?

Einstein said, in 1950,

“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling separated from the rest, a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Our prison is not the discomfort that we suffer from her, it is our expectation that our world would be happier and better without discomfort. And yet without suffering there can be no real happiness. Without ordeal there cannot be triumph. Without pain there is never relief. 

As we pick up after tragedies and start to rebuild our shattered lives, we are being given a chance to do it differently for the next go-around. Storms cleanse, refresh, renew. This is a moment of reflection, and opportunity.