Haunted by Helene

Finding the Center of the Hurricane through the Oak Doorway.

Images of Hurricane Helene haunt me. So much rain. Rivers of rain. Incomprehensible. Small towns like mine broken into fragments and covered with mud. So many other flashes of suffering pour in through the world of my cell phone in my hand. So much to take in, yet so little space to feel into the immensity of grief. It feels as if there is no escape from our frenzied mis-alignment with nature. A pandora’s box has been opened, a damn has been broken, the heat is rising, and it seems we don’t have the will to cool it down.

I breath in and let out a pressured release of air. I hear acorns dropping from the huge oak trees around our home. This is an acorn year, where thousands of small, hard oak seeds fall to the ground, full of the potential of another giant oak. One after another, they rollick down, hitting our tin shed roof like a bullet amidst the brilliant yellows and reds of Fall’s swan song to Summer. The bears, squirrels and chipmunks, will make more babies this year in celebration of the abundance. Next year the harvest will be much smaller. The Oak trees decide this flow, sensing something collectively, they choose the pattern of their reproduction.

Oak trees are tough. They withstand heavy winds, blight, and drought. They anchor the land all around our house with shade and presence. Oak is the sacred tree of my Celtic ancestors. They used oak to make their doors; Duir-Door-Oak. We made a threshold in our mudroom from an oak plank. We step over the strait clean lines of Oak’s growth every day.

What doorway of consciousness am I being asked to step through? My phone wants to draw me in, but I am repelled by the hollowness I feel inside after looking too long into it’s constant feed. Looking out the window I speak silently to the deities of rain, of oak, praying to them to help me understand what to do. Praying for a return to the early days of my life, when the seasons rolled in unquestionably, when giant storms arrived only occasionally, rattling the windows, and clearing old branches from the trees.

Now the weather gods are dancing a wild jig. Rain is both solace and demon, life giver and destroyer. The dance of opposites is so extreme now, it seems the center of the dance hall is almost empty. Like a Hurricane.

The deities and divas are guiding me to seek the center, where it is calm. A doorway?

I close my eyes and seek my center. It wobbles, my mind wants to keep focusing on the outside. Steady, steady, keep seeking center. I feel center close to my heart flowing down through to my pelvis, the place through which my child emerged 20 years ago, to bring his strong oak like nature to this world.

Focus, feel your center, life emerges from the center, the hurricane always has center, a calm center. We can rebalance when we know the center point. This is what the spirits are saying today. From my center, I pick up my phone and send money to the survivors of the wild winds and rivers of rain. After that, the phone can stay face down on the table.