At 6:30 PM on Monday, June 30th, a half an hour out of Chicago’s Midway airport, the pilot told us we had been given approval to land. The tower thought they could get us in just before the storms hit the area. Everyone, including flight attendants, buckled up and we rode through some turbulence before landing. Two minutes after landing it started to pour and thunder. We just made it.

I drove Maggie back to her place in Lockport before heading east on I-80 to go to Blue Island. The storm that had pummeled the Chicago met area was directly ahead of me moving eastward. I had a great view of spectacular lightning displays. Besides ‘heat lightning’, there were numerous ground strikes and lots of cloud-to-cloud lightning bolts. It was hard to pay attention to driving instead of watching.

While observing this display, I suddenly became aware of the fact that the storm system was not only filled with energy, but was also alive. It was a combination of forces, heat against cold, updrafts against downdrafts and the energy exchange that produced all that electricity. It was the first time I ever saw a storm system as a living, active force.

In her book, Awakening to the Spirit World,  Sandra Ingerman writes about this, “However this contact is made, when we sense it, we know with certainty that the soul of Nature is alive (page 75).” I agree. I also know that many people were affected by the storm. Some had property damage and I sympathize with them, having recently lost a beautiful tree in my back yard, not to storms but to the tree’s old age. I miss that tree and I’m sure that people affected on Monday night feel the same way about their loss. On page 78 Sandra writes, “It is vitally important for us to understand and accept that every change, great and small, entails a death of that which was before. These deaths are necessary and inevitable steps before the birth of what is coming into being becomes possible.”

Nature is not just the placid lake, the autumn colors on the leaves or the gently winding stream. It is also those powers which cause change. The monday night storm was one of those changes and anyone who had the opportunity to observe it saw, and perhaps experienced first hand, its mighty power. The storm was a living, moving agent of change, a powerful part of our natural world.