Sighs of Recovery as Another Hurricane Approaches Our Shores.

A Lament of Questions and Raw Emotion

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

Soul work requires the slow, cellular attention to how we are doing with what we are doing. Maybe, read that sentence again before you go on…. Seriously, just read it again.

Living with the soul in mind means you pay attention to not just events, crises and elections, but you look deeper—deeper into how we, the people, are really doing with all that is happening around us. The outside world impacts the inside world of one’s soul. The inside world impacts how we navigate the outside world. We are soulful. We are not robots. We are humans. We are not machines. It’s good to keep telling us this in our day of AI and so much machine like ways we live these days.

Some of us are doing hurricanes these days. Some of us are on vacation. But, soul work isn’t dependent upon one’s geography. Soul Work requires a long look inward discerning the inner weather of one’s own well being. When you choose to look both inward—at your own inner weather—then you learn that the outer weather can be endured. It’s important to look at both weather patterns. It’s vital. To only look at one weather—dishonors the inner life—the inner heart—the inner mystery of Life within us.

As I, along with other in Western North Carolina begin to lift our heads up from our own crisis, our sisters and brothers in Florida are bowing their heads in prayer. We are connected not just through hurricanes but our connection is about confessing our humanity; our vulnerability and the wildness of nature.

We feel the solidarity of our humanity when we see suffering. Suffering and particularly, great suffering awakens us to the plight of the human condition.

We might whisper when seeing the news, “Oh those poor people…. how can they “do it?” But the deeper question is sensing our shared humanity that we, too are among the frail—this time perhaps lucky—next time, perhaps not. We regain our footing to be human and act human when we allow the beachball to surface that our busyness, our preoccupations, our striving has pushed down. Suffering brings up so many questions for us all.

It’s getting cold now in Western North Carolina. At night, it is now dipping into the 40’s. That makes me think of houses without power and the questions of will the new born baby that was born two days ago have warmth if her mother’s breast is cold now? HVAC’s don’t work without power. When it gets cold, a whole other set of problems will need to be faced.

I heard the radio tell us that “We are switching from emergency relief to recovery.” But, I was triggered. This question came up right the moment, I heard the man announces this switch: “What if those. most effected by the hurricane, have not yet experienced “relief” in their plight? How does recovery actually work when there is no promise of water being offered and if power crews might now leave for the next hurricane.

So, I turned in the early morning to my empty page where this poem was birthed. It is a poem of lament. It’s interesting to note that half of the poems found in Psalms in the Scriptures are poems of lament…expressions of grief, questions and raw emotion.

This is my lament. This is some raw emotion on my part, being expressed on behalf of people I know who are suffering and many who I will never meet at all. A lament is a shared way of entering into the plight of humanity—an attempt to voice what, perhaps cannot or has not yet, been spoken.

Here is my lament for my friends, now my family in Tampa already evacuated for the second time in one week and for so, so many others hunkering down in the mountains or by the beach.

I am your brother.

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In this particular poem, I’m writing about the hurricane. But if you’re on vacation now, remember this, let this hurricane and my poem be a portal—a window for you to see and remember and look through some kind of challenging time you’ve recently had or may have in the future. That’s how poetry works. Poetry is a portal to see a larger world that we’re all living in these days.