faith in my higher power
I regret losing contact for a week. WordPress, my publisher, apparently changed
its format and apparently didn’t notify me. It took me several days to figure it out.
And, now that I have, I hope to speedily post this as the first serious storm of the
season rattles the farm and threatens our satellite link.
But I have faith, which is what I want to talk to you about today. It’s not a faith in a
Higher Power. Six months in a war zone extinguished my status even as a marginal
Methodist. I harbor no delusions of an all-knowing, all-caring supreme being. I
have faith in higher power. Literally.
Every summer, from mid-July to mid-September, the stream from the hill above
the house, which we use for our domestic water and micro-hydro, reduces to a
trickle. Although it’s barely enough to fill the small feeder pipe for the house, it
keeps us supplied and loses no pressure. The two larger pipes for the micro-hydro
are usually shut down within a week or so of each other. We then rely exclusively
on solar power, which, as you likely know, is scarce at night.
The down time varies due to weather and, I’m speculating here, seismic activity.
Maybe even nearby logging. One August we got a bonus week of flow from a three-
inch rain. This year we didn’t have to shut the pipes down until September 11th.
The autumn rain snuck in a week early and has hardly let up. We’ve had seven
inches of it in ten days. Our energy system is back to optimum. And, gloriously,
the danger of forest fires is over for three seasons.
So my higher power starts uphill 600 feet away. I don’t say that blithely, and I
certainly don’t mean to offend any Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other
readers. Every summer we lose that power, every summer I believe that it will
return. Jude and I count on and plan around that belief. Isn’t that faith?
