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Return to article | Return to SatyaCenter home page The Ice Storm Winter New Years Newsletter 2009 by Jane Sherry The old stories a scrim through which all of the old me's glimmer faintly. Tempered in ice. It was his "slithering snakes on the roof"- susurrus. And the tympan sound of crack!, crack!, crack!, as whole trees & limbs broke & crashed, each one a resounding echo in the long night. No metaphor the moaning & groaning of the wind, no metaphor the groan & wail of the wind, but a menace outside the walls threatening to bring the storm indoors. And still the slithering susurrus of the snakes on the roof continued. And after. After the storm, there were the lights! The ice lights everywhere- an illuminated devastation. Felled limbs & old trees, young saplings & old boughs, all thrown about the road, every surface painted with ice. Every wire, every rooftop, every blade of grass, every single surface painted with ice. Two days later, the sun arrived & what a glorious sight! A surreal ice painting lit from all sides by sunlight. Sunrise & sunset painted a glittery dreamlike portrait in pinks & reds & salmons all reflecting back together in a rosy icy glow. A painful beauty. And how cold, and wires on the road, and worries about people who lived alone or the sick or the aged, and wondering how they could cope with the loss of power, of heat, of services, of water, of a way to even get down the road for help. And two days afterward, we could drive down the road finally; getting out into a nearby town where the power was restored or not ever lost, realizing how dependent we are on the many services we take for granted most of the time. Comparing notes with our neighbors, who had power off for more than two days, more than five days, more than one week, we all agreed that our hearts overflowed with gratititde & love for the army of strangers who came to rescue us from the darkness & the cold. We wondered how many kisses to bestow, how many warm wishes of goodness we could heap upon them & their loved ones that would repay the sense of gratitude we felt at their presence. We all agreed on not knowing how to express that gratitude. We all agreed that we were reminded of our dependence & interdependence on one another & the kindess of strangers. Ah, you say, so now you remember & consider the heroic daily tasks these strangers perform on your behalf? Strangers who perform their jobs to feed their families so that I may carry on as I do with a business dependent on computers, on transport & bits & bytes. So that I may eat my meal & wash my hands in relatively clean water. I feel certain that each of us must recreate a new future. We can go no further in the direction we're collectively headed. We need to do the hard work to change directions -- toward a future where farms & gardens spring up throughout suburbs & cities, where clean food & clean water for all is a priority, one that we understand in our hearts & act upon with our resources. For this year, the keynotes are patience, cooperation, loving kindness, compassion & an open mind. Time to dream the future into being the kind of place where human justice prevails & greed & tyranny are not the rule. Time to dream the future into being -- here, now.
"A sun pillar is a vertical shaft of light extending upward or downward from the sun. Typically seen during sunrise or sunset, sun pillars form when sunlight reflects off the surfaces of falling ice crystals associated with thin, high-level clouds (like cirrostratus clouds). The hexagonal plate-like ice crystals fall with a horizontal orientation, gently rocking from side to side as they fall. When the sun is low on the horizon, an area of brightness appears in the sky above (or below) the sun as sunlight is reflected off the surfaces of these tipped ice crystals."
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Holidays: family members dragging out the same old stories, like guide posts along their way to carry forward to remember who they are, to remember who they were, to recall mementos, nostalgic magic moments, to re-enact old pleasures. 
Telephone. Electricity. Roads to drive on. Refrigerated food always ready to be prepared into the evening meal. Plumbing which flushes our waste away so we don't have to look at it, mess with it, think at all about it. Trees which threaten the roof being trimmed of their broken bones. Services we consider our birthright, not realizing they are a privilege. 
So, as we enter the new year which brings us a black family in the white house, an economy devasted by greed, poor leadership & even worse--criminals running the show, a new year where too many will lose or have already lost their homes, their livelihoods, their sense of worth (after all, we live in a culture where one's sense of worth is often tied up only with one's economic status), where the weather changes seem to be taking place in an unbelievable hurry, much faster even than the climate change scientists have predicted, when there are no glaciers to be found in the Glacier National Park in Montana, where storms gather their rage around them & devastate whole communities with floods, ice, mud, wind, hurricanes, avalanches, as we enter the beginning of this new year of 2009, we find ourselves on the brink of tremendous change. 
In 2009, it is my wish, and fervent prayer, that wars will end, that the poor will be respected, not punished, that neither religious views, gender, economic status, race nor political views shall stop us from working together, as we must, as a global community of equal individuals and of diverse, beautiful communities with respect for one another, finding common ground as a family of peoples who share and steward a magnificent planet, here all together to learn to be more fully human.
