Some time ago, we experienced quite a windstorm. More than wind, there was a dump of rain, thunder, hail, and all that. My wife and I were attending a Tibetan singing bowls sound-bath with some others in the cancer support community. I’ve described this practice before, here. In any case, the meditation is held in a large room with a tin roof—the kind of place you don’t want to be during a tornado. We’d just got inside when the gust front hit and knocked out the power. The instructor still went through the meditation, but the storm sounds blended with those of the singing bowls. Afterwards my wife asked about Job. Specifically, God speaking from the whirlwind. I told her that was God on a bad day, but I understood what she was getting at—there’s a spirituality to the weather. (I was going to suggest Elijah instead, but “but the Lord was not in the wind.” Alas.
I thought of Weathering the Psalms. My contribution to biblical studies, had I been allowed to remain in academia, would’ve been further explorations of weather terminology in the Bible. But the Lord was not in the wind. I wrote that book because I noticed the juxtaposition of severe weather with daily chapel at Nashotah House. We were required to attend, no matter what the weather. (Such is life on a fully residential campus.) We were reciting the Psalms one day when a storm blew the power out. It may have happened more than once, since we’re getting on past two decades hence my memory’s a touch imprecise on the point. In any case, the spirituality of the power of the storm fascinated me.
It still does. The next morning, out for my jog, I marveled at the number of branches down. Thousands in the Lehigh Valley were without power. This is probably why the ancients considered the storm god chief of the rest. The violence of nature is something that suggests divinity. Other primates have been observed screeching back at the sky during thunderstorms. It’s deep in our DNA. That doesn’t make it any less spiritual. There’s a lot of weather in the Bible. I only explored a tiny piece of it by trying to tackle the Psalms. The Good Book, however, doesn’t say much about the spirituality of weather. It’s there nevertheless. Anything that can snap a tree a foot in diameter like a toothpick has a spiritual message for us. I mused on the way home—we had to take a detour because of downed trees—that had the storm claimed us as victims, dying while meditating is probably not the worst way to go. Now I wonder, what might God’s nice words from the whirlwind be?