The power is off but according to the little icon on my computer, I have a 99% charge.  I might as well use it.  It is the second time in the past twelve hours or so that we’ve lost power.  The remnants of Hurricane Michael have caused hundreds of thousands of outages as it has roared north…more to come, I’m sure.

Some tree or limb is down across a power line…maybe, but we are in much better shape than our neighbors to the south.  Almost six hours of electricity charge left on my computer…my phone at eighty-nine.  If worse comes to worse, I can always crank a car and charge.  I don’t think we will be out that long…but you never know.

It’s quiet sitting here in the dark gray of the late morning and the wind gusts are audible.  Just forty mile per hour gusts.  Living where I live, I worry.  We are surrounded by tall trees and have had a few come down over the years.  Hemlocks, walnuts, tulip poplars, a pecan, sweetgums, a twisted persimmon, and oaks, all live inside our fenced in yard or close enough to worry about.  I worry one may come down on the house. We are on borrowed time.  We’ve lost four or five inside the fence over the years with limited damage, none to the house.  An outside building ripped open like a tin can, a fence and several trashcans flattened, the power line was taken down twice.  A tornado took a hundred and fifty trees down in a ravine behind the house…still down, tangled and stacked like giant Pick-Up Sticks, one upon the other.  It could have been worse.

The power has returned for now, just in time for Breaking News showing the devastation around the panhandle of Florida.  Mexico Beach is flattened as are other areas.  I have a special place in my heart for the area and the people who live there.  Memories of family vacations, an epic college road trip and the most memorable excursion of my life; my honeymoon, a meandering, two-week peregrination along the Gulf Coast from Panama City to New Orleans and back.

We are just barely three weeks past Hurricane Florence, a hurricane that whacked our Atlantic Coast’s bottom at Wilmington before making a hard-left turn and making its way to the foothills of the Blue Ridge and above.  More rains mean more floods and mudslides above us, but so far, we have dodged another bullet.

Is it okay to be thankful for the bad luck of others?  I feel deeply for those not as lucky and it is pure luck…nothing more.  An eleven-year-old in a bedroom in Georgia is hit in the head by a carport…why, not a sixty-eight-year-old guy sitting in his recliner typing?  Good luck, bad luck?  God’s will?

I thank God for his mercy, but I don’t believe my Divine Being points the “fickle finger of fate” at my little piece of heaven and says, “I shall spare you” any more than he cares who wins the World Series or predetermines the champion.  I don’t think God works that way…not that I have any idea of how he works.  I think he could work that way but he chooses not to.

I believe he cares more about how we treat people devastated by Mother Nature than Mother Nature herself.  At least my God does.  I don’t believe a hurricane is a punishment as some of my acquaintances have suggested or a precursor for things to come…unless it is a punishment for mistreating our world, something I do believe we have done.

Too much Old Testament, too much Sodom and Gomorrah.  My belief is in Global Climate Change, not the “fickle finger of fate.”  I believe as Algernon Sidney, “God helps those who help themselves.”  Either way, I believe storms like this will increase in both numbers and ferocity and that I’m on borrowed time for a tap from the “fickle finger of fate.”

For now, the skies are clearing and the sun is peeking out.  Fall temperatures are supposed to be here tomorrow.  I’ll give thanks for dodging one more “fickle finger” until the next one and enjoy the cooler less humid weather.

For those too young to remember, there was a movie entitled “The Fickle Finger of Fate”  starring Tab Hunter but my title came from memories of Rowen and Martin’s Laugh-In from the late 1960s.  Their “The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award” recognized actual dubious achievements by public individuals or institutions, the most frequent recipients being members or branches of the government. The trophy was a gilded left hand mounted on a trophy base with its extended index finger adorned with two small wings.  I would think it is time to reinstitute the award.

The image is from http://www.hauntedstudios.com/Flying-Fickle-Finger-of-Fate-ONE-ONLY.htm

For more musings click on https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM