Sept. 13, 2007 — It began raining gently as we prepared for bed last night. Then it picked up a bit,and there was a little distant thunder. Kelly was soon sound asleep, but not me. The rain, with always such a sweet and welcome sound, had become enemy as well as friend.

I lay awake for hours, thinking, thinking. Those beautiful steep green mountains behind us seem to move over our house in my imagination till they formed a steep cliff, almost a tidal wave, ready to engulf us and the whole town.

I am no stranger to post-traumatic stress and caught myself here. Okay, you’re over-reacting, I said to myself, really our house is not in the path of the arroyos. That was abundantly clear when we were out and about.

I still had personal fears off and on (What if we had to evacuate? Couldn’t get all the animals in the Jetta… etc.) but as the hours passed, my mind moved more and more to the big picture. How many people here were wet, cold, or far more frightened than I about their futures? What would come out of this for San Juan Cosala, a town we’ve come to love, with its many resilient and deeply caring people?

I thought of the many millions of people all over the world who have lived through disasters of all kinds, whether they became the kinds of victims you see on the news ever so briefly, or the ones like us who were just there but not seriously affected. I was briefly grateful this hadn’t been an earthquake.

Certainly nature has ever been erratic but I couldn’t help but mull over the many ways that we humans have changed the face and the climate of the earth. I thought ruefully of my neglected website, simplegreenliving.com, that hasn’t quite become a top priority for me. Maybe that will change sometime soon. I thought about the 8,000 mile road trip that Kelly and I had taken. We’d felt bad about the effect on the environment, and after we got home here, I found a website — driveneutral.com — where I could choose the distance driven and make and model of car, and make a donation to offset our carbon emissions. I had been suprised that the cost had been less than the cost of one tank of gas. Not that I recommend this approach as a reason to drive a lot, but we had felt better after making that small donation.

Finally, after my mind rattled on and on, and the rain subsided, I turned to prayer. I have recently been reading several books about quantum physics and how it ties in with the power of our individual awareness.

So I prayed and prayed, giving thanks, asking for guidance, and holding the situation here in San Juan Cosala in the Light. That’s a Quaker phrase I have always loved (I became a Quaker during the Vietnam war) and my new readings of quantum physics made the phrase even more powerful. Feeling the Light in and around all of us, I finally slept… not long before Kelly woke up and was awake for hours doing his own inner processing.