Prayer of my soul

WHEN STORMS STRIKE…

Last evening there was a storm.

It raved and ranted. Crazed winds howled raising dust ghosts twirling dervish dances across the road, through the streets. Thrashed through the park, whipping through trees shrieking banshee screams through battered branches, lashing at the bamboo fencing around my lawn, tapping a tempestuous tattoo on my windowpanes.

Lights went out. The world was plunged in darkness as clouds burst and the sky ripped open. The wild winds gathered the torrential rain in passionate embrace and tore through trees…

I sat in my room. Waiting for violence to abate. Anger to subside. It did – but it left devastation in its wake.

With the ease of a monkey in a sugar cane field, the storm had snapped off my Champa tree, uprooted the thick Bougainvillea and felled the ancient Gulmohur. The stately tree that had been aflame in red-orange blooms just a few hours before, had crashed across my bamboo fence and now lay sprawled blooms down, on my lawn.

I sighed. More work – arrange for labor, get the mess cleared! I wasn’t looking forward to the morning.

Morning came – and with it bright sunlight. The sight from my window was picture perfect.

I ran out. My lawn was aflame with color – massive Gulmohur branches loaded with flaming flowers lay at my feet. My heart stood still at the sheer beauty of it all.

 

 

 

 

A little dove came exploring…

I stood mesmerized. Suddenly the thought came to me – this was a photo op we would never get again! In a trice my husband and I were out – he with his camera and I with my Blackberry.

The mess has been cleared away. The violence of last night’s storm has disappeared into oblivion. The photographs remain.

And a prayer in my soul…

When human violence comes my way – the bitterness, the hates and angers, razor sharp words and curses – dear God give me strength. To abide in faith. Patience. To wait for storms to abate. Give me compassion, dear God. To ignore the violence till it fades into oblivion.

Remember only what is so vulnerably beautiful in humans.