Hurricanes

Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Café

“I don’t mind the winds of change, but I don’t want a hurricane,” sang the musician, Christy Cox, accompanying herself on one of her own compositions.  The line has stuck with me. 

I discovered that multiple artists have written tunes using the metaphor of hurricane.  Bob Dylan’s 1975 protest song “Hurricane” tells the true story of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a middleweight boxer wrongfully accused of a 1966 triple murder.  As you might expect,  it highlights systemic racism, police corruption and a flawed trial.  Later, Neil Young would release a sweet love song, “Like a Hurricane.”  Even later, 1984, Scorpion released “Rock You Like A Hurricane,” a very different slant, one wrought with a lot of sexual innuendo, and reflective of the 80’s wild rock scene. (Some might recall this was one of the songs that led Tipper Gore, wife of Vice President and later defeated  presidential hopeful Al Gore, to lead a movement for music to have labels warning of sexual content).

Hurricanes tend to vary by degrees much as the songs, from Category I (74 to 95 mph sustained winds) to Category 5 (157 mph or higher). Why do I mention hurricanes in song along side facts about the actual hurricanes we experience with some frequency, you might ask.  My point (thank you for your patience and indulgence) is that we recognize the metaphor immediately—and it applies today in an even more menacing way.

Our world is experiencing “winds of change,” on the precipice of so much upheaval.  One could easily make the case that we have already fallen from the precipice into the chaos and destruction of a hurricane of hitherto unknown proportions.  Hurricanes do not come without warning.  They begin as tropical depressions and continue to build.  It is a mistake to ignore the warnings.  I lived in Mississippi in the 1980s.  People still spoke of Hurricane Camille that landed in Bay St. Louis August 18, 1969, the most costly hurricane in this country at that point.  They described people hosting “hurricane parties,”  dancing on the beach and on balconies, believing it was just another warning that would come to naught.  Hurricanes are fickle things and will scoot back and forth, weakening and strengthening and weakening again, so this apparently was easy to dismiss as not serious. Sadly not so.

We, too, have ignored the warning signs to our detriment.  Leaders with nothing but their own self-interest and that of their wealthy buddies have plowed over the very guardrails intended to prevent the  havoc they are wreaking. So what is our task now?  The answer is to be souls on deck, as Clarissa Pinkola Estes famously wrote: “Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire.”  We nurture and support one another such that we stay centered, grounded, able to shine like gold in these dark times.

As Joanna Macy wrote:

“This is a dark time, filled with suffering and uncertainty. Like living cells in a larger body, it is natural that we feel the trauma of our world. So don’t be afraid of the anguish you feel, or the anger or fear, because these responses arise from the depth of your caring and the truth of your interconnectedness with all beings.”

The invitation is open to share two cups of tea anytime at Hope’s Café or anywhere you share companionship and conversation.

May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” at Hope’s Café, for each other and all those we encounter.  Shalom, Kate