Thunder & Surrender
To stand
Windswept
Bare feet planted in the grass like tender roots
As the thunder rolls in the distance
To feel
The swirls and spirals of Earth’s breaths intensifying
Playing with my hair
Tickling my lips and nose
To look up
And see the black clouds rolling,
Covering up the blue sky
Imposing their will upon the landscape below
To know
I am part of this landscape
The trees and I,
We stand together (with our roots connected to Mother)
The animals and I,
We feel the electricity in the air
The plants and I,
We let the wind take us, move us about
The stones and I,
We revel in the deep reverberations of thunder
To sense
The approaching storm
The sheer power of it!
The never-ending resources of lightning and thunder and heavy winds
Containing the power to effortlessly destroy anything & everything humans have foolishly constructed
I look up to the forest canopy overhead
And I see the treetops are writhing ~
Whipping about ~
Overtaken by the winds.
They bend, they bow, they nod
In deference to the storm
And yet their trunks stand straight and unmoving.
Or so I thought.
I walk up to a nearby tree
(The tree that I belong to most)
I wrap my arms around her
I put my ear up to her trunk
And I hear scraping!
Pulling!
Grinding!
At this close proximity, I can feel that even her trunk is moving!
She is withstanding the torment that batters her leaves & branches,
And the aftershocks reach all the way down to her base …
Even into her roots.
She is twisting and bending, from top to bottom,
Standing strong – yet letting go of all control
As the advancing storm pummels her
This moment now stands out
Like a bookmark on my soul.
I will never forget this sound:
The scraping & grinding as the inside of a tree twists and bends in complete surrender.
I stand on my own
Once again
I put my arms straight out to the sides
And the first raindrops begin to fall
Then suddenly, a torrent of water
Is released from the heavens
I am lashed by the winds
My hair is soaked and whipped about and tangled
My clothes are drenched
The lightning strikes send a chill from my head to my toes
The deep sound of thunder echoes in my heart and in my root chakra
I let the storm take me over.
I am only following the example of the trees.
What surrender
What devotion
What release
What joy
To give oneself up to the power of the tempest
To give oneself over to the natural course of events
To stop resisting
To enter the darkness of the storm
And to accept
Being overpowered
By
The mystery
By Jocelyn Star Feather