dancing between storms and a chorus of chaos

This post first appeared in February 2011, proving that cycles of change are never-ending!

Surely you have noticed — in your own life as well as in the lives of our greater planetary family — that smooth sailing has not recently been the order of the day. Floods and cyclones, revolutions and upheavals, rip-roaring tears in the fabric of individual lives, evolutionary twists and turns and taps on the shoulder have put into bas-relief what so many of us have known in our bellies and hearts for eternity, if not longer.

Inner and outer storms have been pounding a lot of folks, including you maybe? We can’t wish them away, though we can choose how we navigate them and locate the insight and healing they bring. When the storm hits, go directly into the center of it. Feel its raw power and intensity and allow yourself to experience fully the rise of fear, doubt, insecurity, or the sense of being forsaken, unforgiven, and forgotten by an unfriendly universe. 

The rate of change here on Mother Earth is accelerating and expanding. Time has an altogether new and oft-unsettling quality. The familiar is beginning to feel alien — or perhaps it’s the other way around. What is old and no longer works, must (and will) fall away. New ways of being, living and loving are blossoming — and will arrive most easily for those who can (and will) release their attachment to once-sacred cows. How you choose to move and groove through change is entirely up to you.

That’s how I was feeling yesterday  morning — even though the day prior I was swimming happily along in a current marked by grace, joy, gratitude, contentment and a couple of small though remarkable miracles, the most memorable having to do with the appearance of a Good Samaritan smoking a cigarette outside of a gas station convenience store. He ended up not only replacing my hideously straggling windshield wiper, but actually gave me a temporary replacement left over from his own new wiper acquisition about 1/2 hour before our serendipitous meeting. Random acts, my foot!

Although you may view this event as relatively unremarkable, the entire unfolding carried a twinge of the miraculous in my eyes — especially as the ice and snow were melting and every semi driver at 75 mph was taking great delight in spraying his territory directly onto my windshield, leaving a stripe about the size of a piece of bacon through which I might see the road before me.

I was on the first leg of driving two elder friends on a 400-mile round-trip to a doctor’s appointment — and literally dancing between the tail end of one winter storm and the front end of another. The morning had begun with a chorus of chaos. The vehicle I had scraped and swept and prepared the night before obviously had other plans for the breaking day, as it refused to start. Nary a click; just laid there absolutely void of intention.

The snow had not yet entirely filled the space between my two pairs of heavy socks and the tops of my Sorels, so I began transferring the contents of the asleep-at-the-wheel auto into my older, colder Jeep to transport the shovel, the sleeping bag, the blanket, the cooler, my backpack, and other sundry winter western driving regalia to the pickup truck that had just been promoted to duty. (Chorus of chaos swells heavenward as the truck hesitates to open itself to my arrival, smirks at me from under glass-hard ice on every window, and then resists the shift (!) into 4-wheel drive. Some beings clearly enjoy remaining “stuck in neutral.”

The wisdom of “dancing between storms” came to me on a windswept portion of Interstate highway, surrounded by the vast grey/blue/white/black Southwestern sky, punctuated by some mountain ranges wearing particularly angry-looking hats and scarves. My passengers were serenly zoned out, and I hit on one of those epiphany moments when your first instinct is to say to yourself, “Well, Duh.“

Why choose to linger in the energy of a past storm or jump ahead to the next one? Why not dance while the sky is blue? Why not sing while you can, feel the juicy potency of your every cell while you are able, and maintain your connection with Divinity while the sun shines?

Stormy weather is not called stormy weather for nothing, and depending on where you call home, it rarely stays around forever. Yesterday morning I felt like the least-evolved person on the planet, ready to throw in every tear-stained towel and give up on my lifetimes of unremitting faith and devotion to my personal hero’s journey. What’s up? Not fair! Don’t deserve this junk! When is it MY turn to reap the cornucopia I was promised by the All-There-Is?

“It’s not a bottomless pit, you know,” a wise friend reminded me in response to my part-snarl, part-pity-pot call. “There is an end to this, you know.” I snorted in some appropriately antagonistic fashion. How dare she have a perfectly wonderful day while I was sinking into the great muck and mire of me?

I chose to take the high road, grounding myself by watching youtube videos of Whitney Houston and Marvin Gaye singing The Star-Spangled Banner (separately, not as a duet), and allowing myself to be overtaken by intermittent bursts and fits of weeping. I listened to theta-inducing “Liquid Mind” music and played Scrabble Solitaire online, simultaneously winning and losing every game since I was always playing against myself. I warmed up sweet potatoes rather than focus on the near-empty shelves of my fridge, and gifted myself by setting the thermostat up to 70F and also plugging in the electric heater to keep the water pipes sufficiently toasty.

I have bumped up against the edges of my own resistance time and time again. And every time I pronounce to be “the last,” I am humbled. It will continue as I traverse the spiral of personal growth, spiritual evolution, and the deep integration of heaven and earth in my physical form. My soul has chosen this path, and I have chosen my soul.

Storms will blow in and blow out. My vision of who I am, what I am here for, and why it matters, will at turns be clouded or iced-over, with clarity obliterated by the grime and rocks kicked up by ever-deepening inner excavation. I will continue to approach doors that appear inexplicably locked, and I will turn around and find another way in.

Most of all, I will dance when Spirit calls, hunker down when I feel not at all sociable, remain grateful that cereal and popcorn are available when fresh mangoes and cake are not, and strenuously maintain my knowing that my feelings and actions create my world.

My inner barometer is the most highly developed, uber-sensitive instrument that I will ever possess, and though I may turn away in a human fit of pique now and then, it is my go-to source for all that I need to know.

Come rain, come shine, or come snow.