On Higher Ground 2-16-12

Anderson, South Carolina

One of the most staggeringly beautiful of phenomenon is found in the center of one of nature’s most terrifying phenomenon. The eye of a hurricane is one of the most peaceful places imaginable. Low barometric pressure and virtual absence of any wind give a sense of tranquility belying the terror in the near distance. Under clear cerulean skies one has unobstructed views of spectacular towering cloud formations making up the inner eyewall of the hurricane’s structure.

In those beautiful clouds peak winds can easily exceed 210 miles per hour. Hurricane Camille raked across Biloxi, MS in 1969 with sustained winds of 205-210 miles per hour. In 1995 Wilma's minimum central pressure reached 882 mb, the lowest pressure ever recorded for an Atlantic tropical cyclone. This storm maintained winds of 175 MPH. When those winds rake across anything constructed by mankind, all is scoured off as so much soap scum.

The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the most lethal hurricane to ever hit the United States, causing as many as twelve thousand deaths. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 killed as many as eighteen hundred and fifty people, destroying most of a venerable city in the process. Katrina made United States landfall at three different locations, first at the Miami-Dade/Broward county line in Florida, dropping ten to fourteen inches of rain, just after reaching hurricane status. After traversing Florida it strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico making landfall near Buras, Louisiana and again near the Louisiana/Mississippi border as a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina’s highest storm surge of 25 to 28 feet occurred along the Mississippi coast while dropping eight to twelve inches of rain inland from the northern Gulf coast, spawning thirty-three tornadoes.

Theoretical limits of hurricane wind speeds indicate maximum sustained winds are around 200 MPH with peak gusts not much higher, perhaps 215 MPH. On the gas giant Jupiter, sustained winds exceed 1,200 MPH, lasting for years. The staggeringly beautiful phenomenon of Jovian planetary banding and red spotting are the result of intense wind. One can only imagine the scouring effect of a twelve hundred mile per hour blast of liquefied methane and ammonia.

On earth we can take heart in knowing hurricanes have short life cycles and eventually fade away as do dancing dust devils on autumn days. Paying attention to evacuation orders we can move inland to safety. Alas, some of the greatest hazards to life don’t come with evacuation routes and storm shelters. At the center of personal storms there’s no hauntingly beautiful eye where one can take rest or evacuation routes one can follow to safety. One cannot flee cancer by loading up the car and heading inland. Those caught in the utter blackness of alcoholism and addiction have no refuge from the battering consequences of active addiction. Those trapped in affective prisons of mental illness, often consigned to life-long confinement in psychotropic nightmares from the local pharmacy, can’t head to higher ground.

Life happens.

People get cancer. Companies downsize their best employees. Natural disasters destroy our cities. Relationships fail. Spirits break. Individuals taking pain killers for bad backs unwittingly enter into nightmares of iatrogenic drug addiction. Ten percent of American children suffer severe consequences from living with an alcoholic parent. Like many, I was given conventional wisdom, “It won’t get any better, live with it.” Some choose not to.

On Tuesday, a gray bleak day, a thousand of us gathered in the cemetery to take shovels and bury a thirty year old man, prosperous, attractive, well-respected. We watched in tentative silence as cemetery workers set the vault, lowered the coffin, sealed the vault, and handed out shovels. The officiating undertaker described the deceased as one desperately in need of being in control and when he felt his life had spiraled out of control, he saw only one option and took it. He took an escape route that did not lead to higher ground.

I have two long standing friends in dire circumstances now considering death as an option. It’s difficult to convince them hurricanes do eventually lose their strength and calm returns in God’s world. Another friend of mine is dealing with the consequences of his wife taking this same escape route. Fortunately, my friend is discovering a route taking him out of his grief onto Higher Ground.

Our culture is so about being strong, independent, and self-reliant, never letting on to our fears and weaknesses. If these we lost had done as we unceasingly exhort those in recovery to do, share feelings, talk about them, own their fears, they might have had a chance to decompress their pain to manageable levels until they could get a grip on their life circumstances, ones most of us would take on happily. By giving up illusions of control and admitting powerlessness, they might have done the one truly powerful thing that could have saved their lives. I can only pray my friends still above ground will choose the route to Higher Ground and let go.

Is it possible after all one can find evacuation routes away from the vortex of existential crisis, mental illness, addiction, cancer, divorce, unemployment? Five years after being told I had no evacuation route from my own affective cyclonic storms, I’ve found compelling evidence suggesting there’s a way to Higher Ground. My standing on it is all the proof I need. I have numerous friends and family hammered relentlessly by cancer, yet strong in spirit and quality of life, standing on Higher Ground, even if missing a lot of body parts. Another has endured seventy-five surgeries. Downsized friends speak of liberation from the tyranny of corporate culture and the wonder of simplicity. I find great joy working in an institutional kitchen for no pay, sometimes just peeling hard-boiled eggs.

In recovery we learn there’s a calm eye in the storms of our lives, if we but allow it to form around us. By owning our true powerlessness we become powerful in ways unimagined. An anonymous imperative suggests, “I will try to be unruffled, no matter what happens. I will keep my emotions in check, although others about me are letting their go. I will keep calm in the face of disturbance, keep that deep, inner calm throughout the experiences of the day.”

The Apostle Paul exhorts us to “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

And He might lead you to Higher Ground. Just ask.