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Last Friday was the day of preparation for Pesach. I spent much time in the kitchen and decrying the fact that the horseradish I intend to grow in the garden hadn't even arrived from the nursery yet. (When the horseradish came, and all the other accompanying perennials, I was certainly underprepared to get 50 plus plants into the ground--but that's another story.) All day we received tornado warnings on our phones. But we've received those before, and never did a tornado darken our paths. The family went north to go ice skating. I took a walk in the forest with my d.i.l. and granddaughter. We were all out in the world and vulnerable when eight tornadoes (so they say) touched down around us to the west and north west, within a mere couple of miles and skipping over our immediate vicinity. We had no rain, no wind, no sound of a speeding locomotive. Just the dark heavy sky, lower than I've ever seen. We scoffed at tornado warnings. We mocked wussy locals who skitter into hiding at the slightest threat of "weather." But we will be more attentive next time, I assure you. Our sense of safety and well-being was rooted in the familiar. The air was soft and pliant, the sky dark, but unmoving. Yet when two types of air(warm and moist in the lower atmosphere, cooler in the upper) meet and their relationship becomes unstable, the inherent power hidden within the meekness of mere air can become staggering. "People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time," it was said of Aslan. To a certain degree everything has a touch of each, especially if we are to experience to any degree the beauty, power and, yes, holiness, of creation and creation's God. Yes, tornadoes are made of sky, and the sky is most often beautiful...and without air there is no life. Yet, even air, invisible, ubiquitous, can rumble with a power that confirms how small we really are.
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