Breithaupt Park, September 12, 2011

There were flashes of lightning throughout the early evening, and some very long rumbles of thunder. I planned to take a walk to the library, and then in the rain. A few blocks from my house, I realized that the sky was clear in parts and that there was no reason to be walking around, carrying an umbrella, going to busy Uptown when my day had already been filled with people, when I could be going back home, getting my bicycle and going to Breithaupt Park.

I circled the block and returned to the apartment. A few minutes later I left again, this time heading east. I cycled through the park on the road, and stopped on the north east side of the ball diamond. Several short pine trees were grouped on a bed of grass, and I lay down under them facing towards the diamond and the woods. I read my book and occasionally glanced up to let the purple grey sky and the growing wind seep into me. The sky turned a grey blue and the trees became black, and I lay my book down on the pine needles, shifted over to the base of a tree, and entered into the half lotus position. While I meditated, it became darker, and occasionally lightening flashed. A few drops of rain fell. The air became cooler.

I felt a perverse sense that it would be acceptable to die by lightning strike. Not that I would want to, but that if I had to, I could accept it, more than say, dying by being shot or poisoned. I imagined the lightening as a concentration of life's energy coming out of the sky, entering my body and joining me to the earth in an electric moment. An innocent death, a death without meaning, a death by life. Death by nature, like being eaten by an animal or crushed by a tree. Life merging with life.

I then imagined what it would feel like to survive lightning strike. Would I have brain damage? Would I experience more or less anxiety than I do now? Would I have a streak of a scar?

With two minutes left in my practice, there was an intense flash of lightning to the west and I began to wonder if I was tempting fate out here in this field. I chanted my closing mantras:

Om Mane Padme Hung

Ta ya ta
Om
Bekanze bekanze maha bekanze
Radza sumud gate soha

wishing healing for three beloved women in my life, my mother, my grandmother and my dear friend Jean. During this chant to the Medicine Buddha, I visualize myself as the gentle and loving blue deity, and feel his healing energy pouring out of me and into me, into my loved ones. I feel my heart expand with joy.

And then a final

Amen

and hands in namaste, and I leapt up and walked my bike across the dark field, into and through the woods, and back home, where I called my mother and talked excitedly with her, sitting on my balcony, while watching little clouds pass over the full moon.