Surviving the storm.

Storms

“I grew up in Texas, but that was twenty years ago.  Last week, in Fort Worth, they had hail the size of softballs.  We’re seeing more and more powerful storms of all types, almost on a Biblical level.”

                          Bill Paxton

“If left unchecked, global change will create violent conflict, torrential storms, shrinking coastlines, and irreversible catastrophe.”

                          Valerie Jarrett

“This is a moment when we must come together to save this planet.  Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our land.”

                          Barack Obama

         This morning, amazingly, the sun is shining, the birds are singing and there is barely a breeze.  That seems hardly possible after the terrifying devastation of yesterday.  I typically am quite cavalier about storms since we have so many in Alabama—everything from wind to lightning to hurricanes and tornadoes.  Yesterday, my little dogs were so nervous that they were two-stepping around my feet all morning.  I knew we were in for a bad day. 

         I have been in Birmingham since 1980.  We have experienced much ‘weather’ in that time, but I have never seen anything, anywhere like the tornado that came through downtown yesterday afternoon.  It was a mile wide and was not only destroying everything in its path, but carrying with it everything it had already destroyed along the way.  Debris rained down like hail at speeds in excess of two-hundred miles per hour.  The meteorologists trying to report it were rendered speechless.  For several minutes, all we heard from them was the panting of terrified animals.

         So far the death toll in Alabama exceeds one hundred and twenty and will undoubtedly go higher.  I am sitting in my unscathed house in my pristine neighborhood feeling both sorrow and gratitude.  I ask you to pray for this city, this state, this nation, this world.  Please pray that we will wake up and realize that we must change our relationship with our blue planet to one of mutual respect and reverence.

                          In all things give thanks,

                          Jane