Acts of God

Graphic Source: 3-D View of Hurricane Emily, NOAA

When I heard of Hurricane Andrew after I landed in New Orleans (in January 1993), one of the first things I looked up in the library was, why aren't hurricanes a problem in India? I quickly learned that they actually are; we just just don't call them by this name - in Indian Ocean they are cyclones, and in western Pacific they are typhoons. The physics is the same - low pressure with calm winds in the center, surrounded by turbulent winds spreading outward.

It just occurred to me that these weather phenomenon are analogous to what we call God.  In the west He is Jesus, in the east he is Vishnu, and in the Arab world He is Allah. Also, like the eye of a hurricane, the God is within us, as calmness at the center. The turbulent we are, the farther we would be from the Center (aka God).

When I think of of calmness in the center of these massive weather systems, I get goose bumps. Can you imagine calmness in the center of energy that is more powerful than thousands of atom bombs?

People who were caught in the 1926 Miami hurricane - most had never been in a hurricane - discovered that an idea like yours can be fatal. When the eye of the Category 4 storm came ashore a little after sunrise on Sept. 18, 1926 many people thought the hurricane was over and went outside.

When the other side of the storm arrived, one anemometer measured the wind going from less than 10 mph to a gust of 132 mph in two minutes. The available reports say "many people" died when the other side of the storm hit, but no exact figures are available. Newspaper accounts referred to "the second storm."

It's hard to believe today when many Florida newspapers, such as the Miami Herald, have writers and editors who are very knowledgeable about hurricanes, than few people in Miami in 1926 even realized that a hurricane consists of winds going around a calm eye, with almost equally strong winds on all sides of the eye.