“Life is the fire than burns and the sun that gives light.  Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky.  Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.”

– Seneca

Energy.  Life is Energy.

At 4:00 AM, I opened my eyes.  Still feeling half-lost in a dream state, I moved my feet back and forth on the nice, smooth sheets and thought how delicious it is to enjoy that sort of relaxed existence, especially when the clock indicates that there is no hurry to pop out of bed and begin the day.  How odd to be conscious at four in the morning.  How unusual a time for me to be even a tiny bit alert.

Suddenly, there was a boom and a crash!  The whole room was filled with white light for a few seconds; and then it went dark again, as though some huge light bulb had burst with the overload of energy running through its circuit.  Then, like tinkling shards of broken glass, rain began to pelt the window next to my bed.  Now I understood.  The first clap of thunder must have been what jostled me from my dreams.  Now, I lay nearly awake in the darkness before sunrise, listening to the Energy of the universe as it played a symphony of thunderstorm all around me.

There is no better state of being than this for enjoying a good storm.  Soothed by the quiet percussion of water on glass, I floated and drifted in watery half-dreams, bobbing weightlessly in the arms of the sea; until, BOOM!, the waves would meet the shore in a flash of brilliance, and send me tumbling back into the rhythm of the ocean.  I floated on the Energy that hummed all around me, buoying me up until I no longer felt the bed beneath my back.  ’How delicious,’ I thought, ‘to feel the enormity of the force that in one clap creates and destroys, rebuilds and sustains.

Such moments are fleeting.  The fierce thunderclaps and exploding lightning soon gave way to a gentle rain that showered my whole world with the blessing of water — to quench the thirst, clean away yesterday’s dust, and send me back to delightful dreams of bobbing and swimming through a sea of gratitude.  There I drifted, sleeping and waking, to the symphony of rain on a warm, Spring morning.