Meta, yes, that what you call 'Color of Shamasundara' is a beautiful color, of many roiling depths, always stirring. I'm so bookish, but I like the sky. Those who live 'out of doors' read the sky with no weather report, also sniff for portents. I'm lucky where I live, that in this little spot there are no street lights, so when it's dark and clear, I can see the stars.

'Just now I am not ready to appreciate snow again..' haha, yeah me neither. Luckily the seasons allow of my fickleness!
You and your Shamasundara, I guess you are one of those lovers who sees his beloved everywhere.

Homer, the aural aspect of thunder is one of my favourite favourite things. When I was a little girl, I was afraid of thunder storms; I hated them with the lightning flash that told me a peal was coming. But my sisters took me on purpose in the afternoons, and made me sit with them on a second-floor porch that we had. They let me see that they weren't afraid, and that nothing bad happened, and slowly I guess I stopped cowering and learnt to enjoy storms.

That 'voice' of thunder is so so wonderful. How deep it is, and how it rolls, articulate, not 'symbolizing' anything, just 'what it is'. I'm glad you got a few minutes to just listen to the music. Of course, sometimes, there are big 'claps', but even then, when they make me jump, and say 'wow, that was close', I still like it. My father used to say it was giants bowling. Maybe he was trying to let me believe that what for me was fearsome, for someone very big, could be fun. I dunno. Irishmen got funny ideas.

Well, this turned out to be a real keyboard starer. Findhorn eh? Yeah it come around again several times in my life, hint hint hinting and now that I have so successfully broken so many things, maybe it would be the airth that I could find some connection to. May be instead of going out and saying 'this is what I want' I could go out and say 'what do you want' and see who comes. More on this later thanks for this. When I can't find Pan maybe it is not he who is hiding but me who is. Pah!

I also used to fear thunderstorms as a small child. Later on I used to read the Bible and I liked all the thunder/lightning imagery I found in that text. I used to think that thunder was the voice of God, and somewhere around there was a real live prophet who God was speaking to. I couldn't understand 'thunder language' because the message was not meant for me, but the prophet could understand it.

I have just come back from Findhorn! went up for a week (the experience week they call it). I've been wanting to go for years but never got round to it. I also read that book about that guy meeting Pan in a park in edinburgh I think it was. I was only a teenager at the time and it stuck in my mind vividly.

I loved Findhorn, its a great place to reconnect with nature and the spirituality of nature, it touched me deeply. I will definatley go back again, I felt very peaceful and happy when I came home. It was the right time for me to go at this point in my life. And their gardens are magical as is the nature around the area.

I love storms. I am not afraid of thunder, don't think I ever was. (Have never been in a real ferocious tropical storm, it may be added for the sake of fairness.)

It irks me to no end how weather forecasts always seem to assign value to various types of weather based exclusively on what pampered city folk might find pleasant. They present warm weather in positive terms regardless of the fire risk. And rain and storms will be presented as something undesirable. Although nature needs them, and some people (like me) enjoy them!

Ah Dhyana, I understand what you say, I think. Yes, 'nature needs them' and I think OUR natures need them. Don't you think our earthly weather comes to match (or the other way round) our internal weather? We NEED these storms, or simply mist, fog, darkness and light, cold, heat, as you say. This 'pampering' amounts to an unnatural evening out so that we miss the disturbance or turbulence which sometimes is quite a relief, psychically speaking. I once was on a lovely beach, on Plum Island, and could see an electrical storm coming across the sea. As it approached with its brilliant forks, the wind came up, on a warm day, and we (my cousin and I) decided not to run, but just let the light rains come toward us. Yes, we got wet! It is normal and normalizing, to sweat in the heat, to blow on our hands in the cold, and feel the pinch on our toes and noses. I love to see the animals here outside, accepting the weather, in fact I envy them. (yes yes I know, I"m obviously 'inside' as I type this, but,) another thing is to walk outside 'barefoot'. Maybe because my bones are full of air, I like the ground under my feet. I always buy gardening gloves and then reject them and throw them off, because I can't feel what I'm doing with them on. 'Assign value to various types of weather', yes. I think we are innit for a good reason.

Just back from Findhorn! Why am I so pulled across the pond, but only in my mind? I"m glad you got touched deeply. I'm glad you felt peaceful and happy. Thanks for telling it.

Yes, we also need the extreme weather conditions. I love storms and lightning and thick fogs.
At one time when I was working at Amsterdam Airport (where you could see for miles) we heard on the radio that a heavy snow storm was moving our way and that roads were being closed for safety reasons, we just stayed at work of course and then we saw on the horizon a cloud like a black wall approaching us rapidly and still everybody stayed at work. Then we were hit and were covered almost instantly in two feet of snow, very exceptional here.
Everybody had a hard time getting home but everybody was so friendly and helpful it was amazing. I could take a bus for a short distance and had to walk home the rest of the way and I was happy that I hadn't left earlier.

Hello,

Wow, nice description, and what an ideal vantage point you had from the air-port. Yes, you remind me, also, how jolly and helpful people are, if given the chance, by some extremity to share and 'come through'. I'm not being stupid, I know that some extremities bring woe, such as Hurricane Katrina did here. I saw a moving piture of a man, just after, who had his wife and child pulled literally from his hands. He actually said 'she's all I got, and she's gone', which before then was to me only words in a blues song. So I'm not being a fool, sitting on my high perch far away, but I only mean that some part of me, likes to humbled and returned to a little size, by earth. I guess I feel that it puts things in proper perspective, which SOME peoples are not so squanked out of their minds that they lose relation to it, that's all.

So, since the sub-heading of this topic was about 'overwhelming things', I want to say another one. This one won't have any in agreement, I bet. I work not so far away from a small airport, and for some reason in a flight path that fighter jets fly over, doing 'exercises' for some reason. Now look, In the wider realm I wish these things didn't exist, I KNOW that it would be hellish and awful to have them come screaming down at me. I KNOW that.

But still, they are like flying sharks, so honed, with their roaring precision. 'So fast, so cool, so sharp' as Bruce Springstein sang in some song or other. Part of me, the part with no values, no perspective, nothing to protect, loves their ruthlessness. It's awful, ain't it? But I had the same reaction to the, what were those characters in the movie story of Lord of The Rings, those ghastly creatures that were hunting for the little hobbits. And it wasn't even the creatures, it was their ghastly fantasy horses, (!), there was one shot where the little guys were hiding under something, and you just see the snorting half dead half alive horse and its feet. Er, perhaps this is all twisted up in my savage little mind but, even in the picture you posted of the what is that, grim reaper? How casual he looks, leaning back, and my thought is, 'well yer not gonna get away from him atall atall, when he comes for you...' So yes, I like fighter jets. Of course they are only bad imitations of hawks, whom I also love. Like the peregrine. Falcon. They do this thing where they dive, at great speed and with unbelievable precision, on their prey. Maybe I been one, in another life, when it was just innocent to do that. Maybe not.

I guess it's important to me to recognize these things I love. Certainly the great war machine of the U.S. plays on people's romantic notions of 'power', when they run their little commercials tempting kids with 'be all you can be' and play rock music behind some image of a fly-boy tooling amongst the clouds. (They never show any killing or crying, or course). I know enough to see through their come-on. But I know also what buttons they're pushing.

I think I understand your fascination with sharks, hawks and jet planes, I have always been fascinated and thrilled by the cold perfection of the insect and spider world, at one time I even considered studying entomology, I didn't because I thought they would give me nightmares if I had to look at them through microscopes all day.

I also love thunderstorms - I remember being out in one as a child and the feeling of running from shelter to shelter between the lightning flashes. I was on a bus which was struck by lightning a few years ago and there was a collective drawing-in of breath from all those on board.
Once while sleeping during a summer storm, the rumble of thunder transmuted and became Nrsingadeva roaring in my dreams.

As a recovering arachnophobic I can empathise with that. I used to hate it when my infant school decided to start nature projects because they always seemed to involve catching spiders from the school garden and peering at them in glasses, and writing little reports. Even when the girls asked me to catch some for them it never attracted me.

On the other hand, has anyone see the way a spider dances in storms? Fascinating.

The Nazgul -- Ringwraiths. I know the scene, I love it too (love the moment when the joly music track changes the moment before and morphs into something ghastly approaching). Another one that makes my hair stand on end is when Frodo and Sam hide on the slope near the Minas Morgul gate, when the gate swings open and out come the army of orcs, with the King of Nazgul flying on his winged monster above. The music to this piece is so shrill!

Ghastliness is a rasa.

I am trying to finish building a roof over my shed, and the wind is intimidating to me, and hazardous to the unfinished roof.

So while you are praying to the Storm Gods for a nice display, especially aroun' here, that they spare my roofs.

Here's for you, by Robert Frost:

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Bwahahahahaaaa, er,
Gerard, I Practice kindness to spiders, on purpose, because they are at first ugly to me. I'm sure I'm ugly to some, and sort of by a hope of reversal of kindness, I try not to kill them but bring them outside and hurl them away. I do stare at them fascinatedly, as you say. In some myths and stories, it is said they generated the alphabet, and that they're weavers of stories. I don't like them on my body at all, but from a close distance, I like to see them. 'cold precision', yes. I LOVE praying mantises though, i don't see them so much up here, but they were populous in Connecticut where I grew up.

And dragon flies, that are also called darning needles! I like them.

Here's for you, by Robert Frost:

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Bwahahahahaaaa, er,
Gerard, I Practice kindness to spiders, on purpose, because they are at first ugly to me. I'm sure I'm ugly to some, and sort of by a hope of reversal of kindness, I try not to kill them but bring them outside and hurl them away. I do stare at them fascinatedly, as you say. In some myths and stories, it is said they generated the alphabet, and that they're weavers of stories. I don't like them on my body at all, but from a close distance, I like to see them. 'cold precision', yes. I LOVE praying mantises though, i don't see them so much up here, but they were populous in Connecticut where I grew up.

oops, double post.
And dragon flies, that are also called darning needles! I like them.

How permeable you were, at a young age, to reading. Still are maybe, eh?

Adrija, wow. I've never been struck, nor seen a tree be struck, but I've heard it happen and seen the aftermath. Nrsinghadeva roaring in your dreams, that I think is wonderful! I'm envious.

Brainiac; spiders dance in storms? Really? I'll uh, look out for it. I certainly understand your fear of spiders. If they drop onto me, I go 'buh!' and freak out. Poor things, to always be feared and cause repulsion. When I was picking raspberries with my sister, a big round-bodied yellow one came down from my cap, right in front of my face!! Aeeeeeiiiii!!!! But their webs are wonderful, and to see one spinning, I like. Sometimes in the early morning you can see the dew drops on them like jewels. spider dancing, you mean like the tarantella? Hmmm.

Meta, Meta, I don't pray! I won't! I have no influence, and I don't want you to be intimidated. I'll try to keep my desires pin-pointed to my local area, and hazard that my tiny capriciousness will have no bad effect on you and your roofs!

I've been reading about God/religion since I was first capable of reading. Before that even, when you consider the collection of religious comics I had, I used to stare adoringly at the pictures of Rama, Krishna, Shiva, etc. I read three different versions of the Bible by age 9 which were of increasingly difficult reading levels; the first two were childrens' versions but the third was a proper Bible from my local church with small print. I read the whole thing entirely. It was good in terms of expanding my vocabulary at the time ("what does 'intercourse' mean?") and of course there were some parts I couldn't understand, but I greatly appreciated the thunder and lightning imagery found in Exodus, Psalms and other places. I think the Bible was responsible for helping me see the power of God in nature, and thunder/lightning sure is a demonstration of power! I've always been a bookworm.

On spiders, um, I'm not sure but apparently spiders love dancing in storms according to this nature documentary I once saw. They like music as well, unbelievably enough.

this picture was received by me today of the day of the Beltane celebrations, a very Pan like day where folks gave full freedom on this one day to the joy of running around in the night having sex with whomever came your way as a vehicle for the great God Pan to infuse his energy into the community so that it may be whole and keeps it wildness. today, this Pan of Light may sometimes or all the time or anytime manifest in the heart and consciousness of loving beings in their lovemaking in what can be described as an energy rising up the spine and a golden light infusing all the cells in the body

Oh dear. Come as I do to this image, in the Dogma Free Zone, still I drag my little dogma along, panting like an imperial Pekingese puppy. I know that some will take Pan to be but a license giver, for cheap freedoms. Couldn't I just for a few moments stop angsting, and think of Beltane as a celebration, where no heart was broken, no law, no pact, where there is no need of absolution, that fretful baggage from another trip only Up or Down, but never just Here and Now. Why must my inner cherry bomb slouch toward Bethlehem or Vraja or Valhalla or Glasgow, instead of dancing in the moonlight? Why must my mind be overlaid with catechism, and schism, and leave some 'enjoyer' dogged in the balm of my sleeve, a little foreign devil, where my heart beats only in my wrist?

I don't know what the Light is, nor whether it rises or descends, nor what is wicked nor good. I only know, that each spring, I thrum to some dainty and dastardly energy, on some level, aerial and aerthy, sublime and grounded, when everything smells good, looks good, sounds good, tastes good, with no gender even, and comes awake after winter's sleep and cold encumbered slumber mode. It is just, and good, and right, and real, to feel May Day.

I wish Evakurvan was here, to set me straight or not. I am going to listen to the beautiful voices in the Twilight Zones, and eschew the argumentums ad foreverums about what is god or not. I am an animal with a vocabulary beyond the skin. Let me only imagine then, that there is no sin atall, that heaven is in my nature. Just imagine it.

Why Darwin, what a perfect Garland. Perfect.
Thankee.

hello hello

Oh man, two massive comebacks in two hours?

We are blessed!

Welcome back Eva.

'Hello hello'................Hullo!!! Is there an echo in here? Some part of me fell asleep on your stoop! Man, the beggars are riding horses this morning.....

Hi

Hi Evakurvan!