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Weather's Fury
08/23/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. One paradox of extreme weather is that observers like you and me are often silenced by its fury. Commentator David Clark.
All the great writings in the world contain the instruction to "be still". But dang it, we don't have time to be still. Can't everyone see that we're busy. Yes, everybody can see that you and I are busy and my, aren't they impressed.
And then the wind starts blowing hard and the lightning starts cracking and thunder shakes the house and there ain't a person left standing who ain't standing still. We're busy, busy, busy, but a hurricane watch or a funnel cloud sighting reminds us that there's another layer of living that's totally unaffected by our self-important notions of how busy we think we are.
A tornado splinters a subdivision. Photographs don't do it justice, but still, we stand still. We talk of nature's anger, as if nature is a spoiled child we've somehow failed at raising. As if we, not nature were in this place first.
They say the world's great writings were inspired by God, but the weather is the narrative of our world and our lives. The weather is a story written by God's own hand. The message of the narrative, the lesson for our lives, is simple; be still and know.
David Clark comes to us from Cochran, Georgia. The Weather Notebook is a production of The Mount Washington Observatory. It is funded by Subaru of America and The National Science Foundation. Thanks today to Assistant Producer Doug Sanborn.
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