This goes on for over an hour. In fact, it happens 44 times a second, the world over. No, it’s not the 4th of July, it’s the 11th. My dog refused to go outside for her bedtime relief session and is now cowering in the bathroom.

I was awestruck by a mega-watt thunderstorm that actually went on for several hours. The lightning displays were way beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Since this region has the lowest incidence of lightning strikes in the country, this was especially notable. At most, I hear a few good rumbles tumble down the Olympic mountains each year and perhaps see a distant bolt. But this was indeed like an Independence Day show that didn’t seem to stop. It makes me realize how much I miss seeing this spectacle.

And this storm was BIG—I could see forked lightning up near the San Juan Islands and then closer over the Strait of Juan de Fuca. But I could also see bolts over the Cascade Mountains to the east and much closer, all around me until it was overhead. While zigzaggy lightning is always beautiful to look at, it’s those broad flashes of intra-cloud lightning that are so startling. You just don’t expect to see your nighttime world illuminated so suddenly and violently—and so repeatedly.

I was enthralled and sat there until after midnight, gasping and applauding the dramatic show. And finally, the sky split open and a hard rain fell, as it rarely does here. It’s such a primal event and reminds me how inconsequential we are, how little our plans and dreams mean in the bigger scheme of things. I always wonder whenever I witness something so dramatic in nature what early people thought about such events long before there were scientific explanations. To some Native Americans I suppose thunderstorms often meant much-needed rain was on the way. Then again, they might also portend flash floods. Did you know there is actually a form of divination by lightning—ceraunoscopy? (How did we ever live without Wikipedia?) The Hindus, Etruscans and Babylonians found signs in the sky of great interest and believed they could read omens in thunder and lightning. A related and still-common practice that even I enjoy, is meditation on cloud formations.

For me all this electrical force is stimulating and feels like change is in the wind, as if Mother Nature is stirring the soup pot of our lives with a lightning bolt.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Does your life need stirring up right now?
• How do you react to thunderstorms?
• Do you need a good jolt to complete some project—or even to start one?
• Is your life at some impasse, do you need the cleansing action of a downpour to surge through your day and reveal what is essential and what is not?

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View other sky shows here.

I am spoiled because I have chosen to live in a tiny rainshadow where the annual rainfall is about 10”—the same as Los Angeles. (Please don’t tell anyone else…during the housing boom we were overrun with outlanders hiking up land prices.) Because the vast, spectacular Olympic Mountains have our backs, we are blessed with mostly dry weather. To be honest, not always sunny, but dry anyway—which is nice, since I have a dog to shepherd outside all day long. Now I feel compelled to do it, insert cute pic of my adorable 15-year-old girl, above.

Anyway, this morning I lazed in bed awhile because—gasp—it was raining quite hard, and as I’ve said, I’m spoiled. Sure enough, 30 minutes later it stopped. Here’s another amazing thing about this slice of paradise: when it does rain, it almost always does it at night. How considerate is that?

Now here’s the really cool part. If I had only looked out the windows on the south side of my house this morning, all I could have seen was rain and a thick, gray low-slung hunk of clouds pressing down on me. Looking to the north, however, revealed that my neighbors in the San Juan Islands and British Columbia were enjoying a bright sunny day. (Sorry the photo can’t be more clear—this is a difficult thing to photograph. If you really look carefully you may be able to pick out the distant snow capped mountains of Canada.) I’ve seen that phenomenon a few times—and just as often the reverse—so I don’t begrudge them their lovely day. (Besides, the sun will most likely overcome this dampness here.)

It did get me meditating about edges of things and points of change.

I wondered how many times in my life a fresh wind was in the offing, just around the next bend—had I pushed on a bit farther down the trail. How many days have I wasted in grayness, not knowing the sun was shining in the other direction? How many opportunities were already rising up out of my chaos ready to present themselves had I persevered just a bit longer?

While I’m not one to dwell on regrets about the past, I do want to take this thought to heart and be more alert for these possible points of change in my life. We don’t always get such a sure sign, we don’t often get to SEE the sunshine just over there, which does inspire hope that we will reach it (or it will reach us). I believe we often see what we’re looking for, whether it’s what’s wrong with the world or what’s right with the world. What about you?

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Do you feel you are at some edge in your life?
• Have you noticed any new points of change lately?
• Did you do something about it?
• Are you aware of subtle shifts of energy, do you look for signs of improvement—and thus see more of them?

Meditate on another sky show here.

I love outer space. I’ve never been a sci-fi fan or a Trekkie or—gasp—even seen Star Wars! But since I was a little girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest I’ve loved sleeping outside during the summer under the stars. It’s one of the reasons I love camping, because it gets me even farther away from light pollution. Even though it’s still winter, this can be a great time to stargaze—if only for short periods. Visibility is often better at this time of year.

In looking for a meditation video to share with you, I came across this brief descent into the Helix Nebula (also pictured above and below, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope). I find that nothing alters my perspective and shrinks my worries as fast as contemplation of the vast night sky. I urge you to visualize any challenges you’re facing as being consumed by this collision of two gases near a dying star.

The Helix Nebula is one of the closest of all planetary nebulae—close being a relative term in astronomy—lying at a distance of about 400 light years from Earth. The colorful, visible gaseous fragments lie along the inner edge of the star’s ring, trillions of miles from the star at its center. The comet-like tails form a radial pattern around the star like the spokes on a wheel. If observed from a dark location, the Helix is visible with binoculars, and shows the object as a large circular hazy spot.

Enjoy the gift of this extreme beauty, miraculously captured by modern technology also whirling through space. Breathe. Relax. Release. Meditate.

MEDITATION VIDEO

CONTEMPLATIONS

• How do images of outer space make you feel?
• What symbolism do the colors have for you?
• Do you allow room in your soul for mysteries?
• If you go outside tonight and make a wish upon a star, what will you ask for?

Jump aboard Comet Lulin here.

It is a sign?
Am I supposed to double some effort?
Reverse a plan?
Amplify some delight?

Then just as quickly, the clouds close like curtains and move in so near that sky and sea merge into one gray wall. But I don’t care. I will hold this twin vision in my heart forever.

Then at noon another rainbow appears, full and large, and arcs over the bay in a perfect bridge from peninsula to peninsula.

I wish I could walk across it, enveloping myself in every part of the spectrum—becoming violet, becoming aqua, then green, yellow, orange and finally reveling in red—living for those moments directly inside the light. I would be weightless, warm, wondering:

• Would I be altered, like someone who survives a lightning bolt?
• Would my skin glow and shimmer with the memory of being green and blue?
• Or would a mark appear—some cosmic tattoo on my forehead to alert the initiated that I, too, had crossed the bridge?

I would like that—a round rainbow bindi dot between my eyes, to keep me focused on the magic floating all around us, just waiting to be enjoyed.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What magic waits in your world to be seen?
• What omens have appeared to you lately?
• Did you act on them? Is it too late?
• Have you been altered by an encounter in nature?
• What color of the rainbow do you want to be today?

MEDITATION VIDEO

I choose to walk the path of light. This video gives much to contemplate, and is about the Rainbow Warriors who follow the way of Great Spirit…very inspirational.

A green mass of ice and gas, it is due low in the late night sky. While I wait I will meditate on the vast expanse above me. Living as I do so far from cities, my nighttime sky show is dense and glorious.

After a spate of cloudy/foggy nights, at midnight it is inky moonless dark and as clear as freshly Windexed windows. The San Juan Islands are dotted with lights, and Anacortes glows in the background. All the usual beacons and lighthouses are on duty—old friends I miss when weather keeps us apart.

I wait, but no comet yet.

A freighter eases down the Strait glimmering like a mirage. This is my familiar nightscape, the one that gives me comfort, the one that makes me feel connected to all the other lights in a giant, connect-the-dots picture—an ungainly constellation without a Greek pedigree.

I wait, but cannot see the comet.

Of course there are plenty of picturesque lights just a mile away across Discovery Bay. Those lights are visible on all but the foggiest nights, but they hold little allure for me. I’ve driven all those streets, know people there, have been in some of those houses. That is my extended known world.

I wait, but perhaps it is my eyes that cannot see the comet, for the comet is surely there, streaking toward Regulus in the southeastern sky.

What intrigues me are the more distant lights, ones I can’t assign to anything in particular. Those abstract lights can be whatever I believe they are, and they fill my mind with stories spun from photons, wave sounds and the darks shapes of islands anchored in this vast expanse of saltwater.

I wonder if my future is waiting for me there, another life pacing the shore, impatient for me to live it, to step into like an exotic new dress wildly patterned with vibrant orchids and hibiscus?

Meditating on night, becoming a black blank, I channel Comet Lulin in my mind’s eye at least. There it blazes across my imagination, flirting with Saturn, trailing green prayers across the galaxy.

Here is my prayer: With your distant perspective, Lulin, bless us earthlings with the wisdom to save our own gob of rock hurtling through space. And while you’re at it, Lulin, help us to put on some speed.

MEDITATION VIDEO

Thanks to an astronomer in Japan, we can all see what we missed. Enjoy this brief view of Comet Lulin.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What are you still waiting for in your life?
• Is it worth waiting for?
• Are you too impatient?
• What steps could you take today to move closer to your goal?

Enjoy some other sky shows here.

rainbows in the night sky, click to enlarge

A pale green luminous band arcs overhead, silhouetting a fir tree with unearthly light. Bands of rose and orange light glow just above the horizon, but the sun and the half moon set together hours ago, so it is no playful trick on their part. Nor are there large city lights nearby to shine the sky. Even the geese on the lagoon are aroused.

The sky in the northeast is a paler blue, as if the sun was about to rise, yet that is many hours from now. The bands of color shift and fade and reappear quickly—a fleeting show for the lucky observer. Magical. Mysterious. Incomprehensible. How it must have stirred the first people.

I love few things as much as I do color, so to discover my night sky suddenly tinted like a rainbow—without rain or sun—is nothing short of astounding. I want to wake the world to witness it, to see these exploded particles from the sun drifting down to earth, painting the late night sky in a dazzling display: the aurora borealis.

MEDITATION VIDEO

Here’s a thoroughly relaxing video from Mystic Zen featuring many arrays of northern lights along with soothing music. The perfect break for a busy day. Enjoy!

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What alchemy is present in your life? Or is it still invisible?
• Can you open yourself to altered realities, to the unexpected?
• Could you color your ideas differently, add some magenta to your life?
• How will you be exceptional today?

DOWNLOADABLE AFFIRMATION CARD

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Enjoy another sky show here. Or if you’re in the mood for another meditation on the skies, you’ll find one here.

OFFERINGS

Dazzle with the dramatic colors of the aurora borealis, preserved on a ceramic tile.
The northern lights artwork in this post is available on a hardwood box with a ceramic top, by visiting my CafePress shop.

These dark, short winter days often reveal a surprise gift—a sunrise that throws light up between breaks in the clouds, plus enough swatches of clear sky to color the bay an iridescent aquamarine. I gather the pieces of blue sky around my shoulders like a shawl of remembered summer days. I bask in the momentary light and absorb it into my heart, where it must be pumped throughout my body as if from a power plant.

I depend on these fleeting glimpses of sunlight to tease me along through winter, to glimmer like a promise—a bargain I must make with the sun each January. I will battle my winter demons, who fight so intensely to strangle my hope, if the sun will show itself whenever I need a boost, a taste of my prize.

DOWNLOADABLE AFFIRMATION CARD

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In a wintry mood?
Enjoy other winter tales here.

Then a sheet of lightning glitters above the water, while thunder roars and tumbles down the Olympic Mountains as if hurled by Zeus himself. Crows are silenced and tuck themselves safely into huge douglas firs. Young fawns are startled and scamper after their mother into the woods. Only gulls are impervious, bouncing gleefully on swift currents of air. Spring will not ease gently into summer this year.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What is demanding your focus now?
• What should you be paying attention to in your life?
• Do you need a jolt of thunder to rouse you from a state of inertia?