One of the family stories I grew up with was the tale my father told of living through a massive hurricane that hit his native land of British Honduras, now known as Belize, when he was 10 years old. He, his parents and siblings were staying at his grandparents’ house on St. George’s Caye to celebrate a national holiday.
They were just about to sit down to his favorite dinner—chicken and green peas—when outside the wind began to pick up, whipping and slashing at the palm trees. The sky turned angry, the sea churned.
My father’s grandfather was certain that their house, sturdily built and having weathered many storms, could withstand anything. But my dad’s father was adamant that they needed to get out of the house quickly and take refuge behind the water vat, the storage tank where they collected rain water.
His father-in-law finally agreed, and they hurried out of the house as the storm raged around them.
As the water began to rise, they huddled in the small edy behind the vat. The wind roared like a locomotive. My dad stuck his head out once to look into the storm, but quickly withdrew it when the driving rain pelted his face like bullets. His father grasped him fiercely. In his later years he would remember the experience. “The first time I knew how much my father loved me was when he nearly strangled me during the hurricane.”
They sang hymns.
O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast
and our eternal home.
The roof of the house flew past them.
Then, suddenly, everything grew absolutely quiet. Still. The sky overhead turned blue. They were in the eye of the hurricane.
They’d made it halfway through and were thankful that the house was still standing. Hopefully they would have a place to shelter overnight.
But when the backside of the hurricane hit, they saw the entire house swept into the sea. That was the moment when, young though he was, my father realized with a shock how fleeting life actually is.
Eventually the storm subsided. They and their neighbors were able to salvage a few boats that had gotten snared in the mangrove behind the island and they set sail for the mainland, one of the boats carrying the body of a young neighbor girl who was killed when her family’s vat fell over and crushed her.
Pummeled by the Storm
I read a channeled message this week, the Cosmic Times, that said if we could see Earth’s energy field from afar it would look like the entire planet is enveloped in a hurricane.
Don’t we know it. Although we may not be able to see the storm that is pummeling us, we can see its effects. We are watching in disbelief as the institutions that we thought were so sturdy, structures that had weathered every storm in the past, are beginning to fly apart before our very eyes.
People are terrified. Some are running toward the bunker of authoritarianism, believing that a strongman can keep them safe. It is completely understandable. And completely naive.
Because Kali is on the loose, and no human institution built on a false foundation—the foundation of separateness, the foundation of domination, the foundation of illusion—can withstand the tempest of Truth that has been unleashed on this planet.
Quickly now, abandon your allegiance to the small self you thought you were, its flimsy certainties and the shabby world it had built.
Give your allegiance only to your Divine Luminous Self and the new Earth it knows.
Above all, take refuge in your Heart. It is the eye of the storm that sees clearly and shows you how fiercely Love has you in its grasp.
It is there, in your Heart, that you can hear the angels singing their hymns of praise for this blessed cataclysm that has come to set you free.
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