As the Spirit Moves Me
by Pam Burns-Clair

Nature as the Ultimate Unifier

March 12, 2006

Have you noticed nothing is as it’s supposed to be regarding this year’s weather??  It’s all in extremes.  I have trouble knowing what to wear in the morning, and even the weather reporters have missed the mark much of the week, except that it would be stormy.  But really, it’s been all over the map all winter.  I recall in Feb., after the Great New Years Flood, they said it was the hottest on record ever, then, a week later it was the coldest in 105 years!  In the last 2 weeks I’ve been hailed on heavily twice…and in the last month, the low lying hills of both Napa and Sonoma have been snowed on!  Normally when I’m slugging it out with my taxes, I resent that it’s beautiful and compelling outdoors—I yearn to garden or go hiking and feel confined to my calculator—but this year, it was drearier outside than my numbers and piles!  Some consolation…

I emailed my sister this weekend that 2 mornings so far it was below 30’ on my outdoor thermometer and we were getting socked again with another storm.  She wrote back that in Austin, by sharp contrast, it was a record breaking 92’ the day before and 86’ yesterday—and their drought continues!!  I heard the hurricane experts predict that this upcoming hurricane season on the Gulf Coast will involve 5 major level 3 or greater hurricanes.  Woah!  It’s becoming uninhabitable down there, seems to me!!

PJ has pointed out that the stars are all over the map like the weather this week.  So what’s a human to do??

Where we can’t seem to see eye to eye between the red states and the blue states…between Republicans and Democrats…some insist this war is protecting us where others feel the war is our undoing…some consider that tax cuts and welfare cuts and lobbying for special interests that suit the wealthy are where it’s at where others despair that we’re selling our kids and those who most need help short and this administration is leading us down a deteriorating path…Nature seems to be reminding us, whether we’re praying for rain or praying to be spared another storm, we’re all in the same boat and at her mercy.  The more we fight and can’t get along and continue to operate from a shortsighted out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality, the more we seem to be reduced to little people, collectively groping to figure out not just what to wear, but how to heat (or rebuild!) our homes or get around.  If we grasp it, we may begin to notice the impact fossil fuels or cutting down our rain forests are having across the planet in our, or somebody’s, or future generations’ back yards!

IF we grasp it.  Nature seems to be screaming louder, such that sooner or later, we’ll have no choice but to grasp it.

Whatever it takes to contend with the weather—boots, umbrellas, blankets, cleaned out gutters, tire chains, antifreeze--may be what we need to dissolve the divides between us.  Nature seems to want us to share, and it’s up to us whether we share higher gas prices, disaster funding being spread too thin or food supplies and alternative energy resources.

One planet, One people.