I’m sitting in the middle of a severe thunderstorm, the kind that would’ve once sent villagers scrambling for shelter and prayers. The rain falls in sheets all around me, drumming the roof, slicking the windows. Lightning flashes across the sky like the signature of some ancient god, and the thunder follows behind like applause—or warning.
But I’m not afraid.
In this modern age, I know the odds. I know I’m safe. If something truly dangerous approaches—a tornado, a siren-worthy funnel—I’ll hear the alert on my phone and gather my family. We’ll walk to the basement. I’ll sit in the old chair with my two ladies and our pups, the ritual of safety as familiar as it is comforting.
So for now, I stay. I sit with the storm.
And in doing so, I notice things.
I notice the momma bird, wings arched like a cathedral over her nest, shielding her young from the downpour. I hear the voice of the wind—not just its howl, but its intention. I feel the thunder in my chest like a second heartbeat.
While others run for shelter at the first sprinkle—hoods up, shoulders hunched, eyes lowered—I remain. I watch. I wonder.
What is it they flee?
Is it just about getting wet? Or is there something deeper—some primal reflex still whispering that storms are wrath, that lightning is danger, that the unknown must be hidden from?
Sometimes I think we’ve traded awe for algorithm. We know what storms are now, in the scientific sense. Doppler radar. Pressure systems. Forecast apps. But knowing about a thing doesn’t mean we know how to be with it.
And that’s the deeper grief.
I sit in this storm while others scatter, and I feel something sacred. Not mystical. Not dramatic. Just true. A presence. A stillness. The rare reminder that I’m not separate from nature—I’m in it. I am it.
Most people live on the surface of weather. They run from rain like it’s a flaw in the day. But here, now, soaked in the sound of sky and water, I feel more alive than I have all week.
I alone see the bird protect her future from the falling sky.
I alone hear the wind speak in tongues older than language.
I alone live.
The bird does not curse the rain.
She opens her wings and becomes the shelter.