The Hand of God

There are times
when the wind whispers
secrets to the trees, softly caressing
each leaf, dancing over the grasslands
and kissing across the skin;
a pleasant interlude, a time
for kites, cloud-watching,
laying in a hammock, lulled
by the sway of the breeze.

Then, there are times
when the wind rages, crying
through the night, a wailing lament,
the sound of ten thousand lost souls
searching for solace as yet unfound,
a banshee’s symphony of thunderous
crescendos, blue-white lightening strikes,
rampaging through the countryside
leaving only destruction in its wake.

A time, when surely we see
the hand of God at work, the power
and awe-inspiring force of nature
that bound across the landscape,
helter-skelter, skipping over this
house and leveling that barn,
uprooting trees that have stood
for a century, leaving only
tears and broken dreams behind.

And yet, the sun still rises
blessing each day with a new
beginning; some filled with hardship
and sorrow, others overflowing with joy
of a life still lived. The secret is determining
how to find the joy within
the hardship. That must also be
the hand of God delivering
us out of the darkness into the light.


(Life on the plains always includes the wind; it is a presence that lives and breathes, surrounding the inhabitants with both pleasure and fear. It becomes a tornado, a force so powerful that those at the high end of the scale, EF5, are sometimes referred to as “the hand of God”.  ~ lgb, 2010)

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Springtime on the Plains

Each spring we put away our winter
woolens, unearth our cottons and shorts,
begin the time-honored tradition
of sky-watching; a regional past-time,

searching the skies for approaching
grey and black clouds, towering
anvils above the grassy seas
flowing across the plains;

listening for the bulletins blaring
“seek shelter NOW”, hoping, praying
the National Weather Service is wrong,
this time, please, God, let them be wrong;

imploring the deity that the fifteen
minute advance notice is enough,
that you don’t hear that freight-train roar,
nor gaze into the eye of the abyss;

that time elapses and the tornado
skips your house, that those icy fingers
of fear are not a premonition of what’s
to come, that the ‘all-clear’ is heard soon;

that your friends and loved-ones are safe,
and you tell yourself, over and over
that it will never happen to you . . .
until it does.


(NOTE:  Although I've lived in Oklahoma for the majority of my life, I have never suffered the loss of a loved one or even property to a tornado - I've been very fortunate in that respect.  I remember many times in my childhood that someone would tuck me into a closet or bathtub covered with blankets and pillows to wait out a storm.  There's nothing you can do but shelter, wait, and pray.)

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Question Follow-up: F6 Tornado

Okay, so there is a F6 tornado headed my way and I only have 20 minutes to prepare. What would I do?

I live out in the country, about 20 minutes from anywhere. The last thing I would want is to be on a rural highway and caught by a tornado. I have elderly parents living on the property as well, so I would stay at home and take my chances there and use the time to prepare as best I could. I would gather blankets, pillows, battery-powered lighting, bottled water, power bars or packaged food, a battery-powered weather radio, and a cell phone. Once I had the parents and items tucked-in somewhere, under the stairs, in a hallway or bath, I would keep an eye out as long as possible. If the tornado approached, I'd head for the shelter and start praying, and keep it up until it was over. One way, or another.

Of course, you also have to understand that not only do I live on a rural property that's 20 minutes from the nearest town, but Oklahoma is not heavily populated. I think that on the last census there were about 3 million people in the entire state. As such, when you're out in the country, you rely on yourself for the most part.

If you're interested, you might check out this link. This shows you the destructive capacity of an F5 tornado. http://newsok.com/may3

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Question:

I was asked an interesting question today. The situation and question are as follows:

Situation: There is an F6 Tornado heading your way. You have 20 minutes to prepare or get somewhere. What do you do, stay or go? If you go, what would you take with you? What would you save since everything else would be gone forever?

For those of you who don't have tornadoes, an F6 tornado has been termed 'the hand of God' - it literally scrapes /destroys / wipes everything in its path from the face of the Earth leaving nothing behind. Its winds are worse than the worst hurricane. With tornadoes you may only have 15 - 20 minutes advance warning.

So there's the situation, what would you do? Thought-provoking, isn't it? If you had to decide what was most important in your life, knowing you would lose everything else?

Think about it; I'll give you my answer in another post.

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