It just stormed really hard here in Philadelphia for like 5 minutes.

I love storms. Particularly when I feel like I can just be in them, experience them fully, from a place of relative safety.

There’s nothing like being in full snow gear in a massive snow storm, walking up a long hill in the woods. You can shout and your voice stops an arm’s length from you.

Or being in full raingear in a torrential downpour with a hundred lightning strikes per minute.

I’ve been in many storms at key moments in my life. The truth is tha they probably became key moments in my life because of the storms.

Like each of its component thunderclaps, a big storm is like a sudden explosion through the normal everyday experience of the air we breathe and walk around in.

It’s a cue to pay attention. You can’t help but pay attention.

You keep paying attention.

A bit softer, gentle rain falling while you sit on a porch. The smells. The fragrant mist that rises from the impact of each raindrop.

ofter still, just a brisk wind, cloudy, a couple of leaves blowing by.

We all need a storm once in a while to jog us back into awareness that we’re alive, to remind us of real danger, not the dangers we make up, and that even in that brilliant, chaotic danger, we are here.

May we all be safe, and well, and happy, and awake for every storm.