Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: tornado

  • Calm the Storm

    This post was inspired by my early morning reading of Barbara Brodsky’s most recent blog about the summer she could not swim because of an infection in a toe bone and the risk of amputation. Reading what she wrote of her experience, along with her appreciation to again be basking in her love of swimming, I had memories to share.

    I told her of a time when I had briefly overcome fear of deep water (in this lifetime generated by a near-drowning while a pre-teen). I was taking an adult non-swim course at the YWCA in preparation of leading high school youth on a wilderness canoe/camping trip. Buoyed by confidence, I quickly enrolled in the next level class. But that class had a different instructor.

    Something about the combination of that teacher’s style and the tasks required for this next level set me back…. by the end of the session my competency had digressed. Fear had set in again. I have not yet regained the joyful jaunting Barbara thoroughly enjoys.

    I told Barbara how much I appreciate the way she and John Orr teach the dharma by telling their own experiences. The term “dharma” has no single-word English translation, its exact meaning depends heavily on the context in which it is used. Derived from the Sanskrit root dhr — meaning to hold or to support — dharma is the truth of what is. Dharma represents the truth of an underlying order that sustains the universe.

    Last Sunday’s sharing as guest pastor at St. John United Church of Christ in New Buffalo was about “Mindful Morality” — differentiated from morality as a concrete idea. We were not looking at something always being right and another something always being wrong. We touched on an understanding of how the insular cortex processes physical disgust (like tasting rotten food), and also lights up during moments of moral disgust (like witnessing unfairness or cheating).

    I told Barbara when John and I were here in our 42-year-old mobile home while tornado warnings were going off last evening, I calmed myself by sweeping the floors. I could not control what was going to happen. I could only do what I could do in the moment. I remembered the story of Jesus calming the storm. I remembered when my colleague/mentor Dr. Mary Jo Bulbrook had a group of indigenous healers from all over the globe at her place in North Caroline with a hurricane coming. They created a healing circle and each did what he or she drew from his or her lineage to “calm the storm” both literally and figuratively. That hurricane dissipated all around them! The group gave great gratitude that they did not even lose electric power.

    Before the storms came through last evening, I had filled a bucket of water to be able to flush toilets if we lost power. John can use that to water flowers in a day or so.

    “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.” ~ Edward Everett Hale, American author and clergyman

  • Winds of Change

    Ride the winds of change, unafraid.

    ~ Larry Ward

    A friend mentioned Russell Boulding’s Earth Energy Healing work last Thursday and I finally got around to checking his website out. Russell says this of himself: “All of my life I have been inclined towards a left-brain rational approach to thought and action. I have a BA in geology from Antioch College (1970) and an MS in water resources management from the University of Wisconsin/Madison (1975). From 1977 to 2003 I worked as a free-lance environmental consultant, specializing in environmental problems related to coal mining and contamination of soil and ground water.”

    That was before the winds of change blew Boulding beyond his intellect.

    It certainly might be that the human intellect is overrated.

    Machaelle Small Wright’s procedures for gardening with nature spirits blew the winds of change for Russell. You can visit his website to read the amazing details of his life-changing experience after he blurted out without forethought, “I’m ready, take me as far and as fast as you can.” (See: Russell Boulding/Earth Energy Healing.)

    Late in the spring of 2004, a mother robin built her nest in the crook of the downspout just outside our bedroom window. On May 22 of that same year, a 2.5 mile wide F4 tornado tore through Nebraska with its 200 MPH winds of change. The storm damages totaled $160.22 million. Our friends, Roger and Sharon, survived to rebuild their home when their entire town was blown away.

    In the 40 years John and I lived at 4230 Lincoln Avenue, only that once did a robin built a nest in that location.

    When the storm system that had devastated Nebraska raged through Southwest Michigan, John and I watched out our basement window as the wickedly wild winds blew trees near horizontal to the ground. Our beautiful bluff a few miles away was cleared of its majestic mature trees, hundreds of roofs were ripped off area homes, and tens of thousands were left without power for weeks.

    Four baby robins weathered the storm in a secure nest.

    We can be sure it was not “intellect” that guided the mother robin to place her nest in that unusual location.

    Boulding says, “It has been necessary for me to develop my understanding of the larger reality that lies beyond our physical world primarily through intellect rather than through direct experience.”

    Once you know beyond a doubt the source of the winds of change is Divine, like Russell, you and I are able to say, “I’m ready, take me as far and as fast as you can.”

    Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home. ~ Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions

    P.S. — A core benefit of the Imagine Healing process is the “evidence procedure.” Because you can see something you know is following its natural progression, you can pair up something else with it. Since late yesterday I am watching the progression of healing of a very sore little toe. Healing is natural. As that heals, I am saying to the whatever it was that moved the mother robin, “Take this healing as far and as fast as you can.”


    P.S.S. — Imagine my surprise to see my friend, Dottie, in the photo with Russell Boulding. He had come to Friends Lake Quaker community to give a workshop.