The fear shifted to noise and the noise to silence
November 8, 2026
Presently I’m house sitting for a friend in Hā’ena on Kaua’i’s North Shore. It’s country. Driving out here I feel like I’m driving out to Hāna. Even though that’s a different island (Maui). A different direction. A different story.
Last Saturday there was a storm. Winds and water socked the island from the windward side. It’s been raining on and off all week but this was consistent, without any reprieve. I was out catching up with an old friend at the farmers market when an amber alert popped up on our phones—flash flood warnings. Hanalei Bridge closure. Road closures. Streams high. I should have been more mindful, it had been pouring all morning. The ground, already saturated, somehow managed to receive most of the water. Yet sure enough the mountain streams began to rise. Waterfalls raging. Roads awash with muddy red water. And me gripping the steering wheel driving cautiously home.
The bridge did close. I was in one of the last convoys to cross. (Days after I was told that bridge closure is common. Be prepared.)The road around Lumaha’i was just passable. Thankfully, I made it home. New Mexico rains hard. But this was relentless and sustained. As the hours passed and the rain continued I began to spin out. My heart racing. How do folks handle this? I asked myself, genuinely frightened. I knew the neighbors were close by but I still was terrified. The cats napped calmly, unaffected. I tried to take my queues from them. Listening for the reemergence of birdsong over the sound of rain in the late afternoon light.
You have nothing to fear, my husband said. Nothing? Really? Easy for him to say. He grew up with storms like this. Relentless rains and winds typical of South Florida’s East coast. I didn’t. So when the weather escalates, I get nervous.
Several hours into the storm, without any end in sight, I finally laid down to do a little process for the sake of my heart and nervous system. I began to slowly breath into my heart center. I felt my finger tips gently pushing on my sternum. With my eyes closed, I shifted my perspective inward. The storm remained close. Its presence could not be ignored.
In the following moments I embraced my fear as best that I could. I welcomed her in. The moment of surrender was when I told myself, it’s okay to be afraid. May she find a way to move through and pass over. Steady. Stay breathing. Steady.
The rain continued to pound the metal roof and rattle the trees. And the fear shifted to noise. What does the rain have to tell? What is my heart murmuring? And it surfaced: You are not alone, I am always with you. My magnanimous soul is here with me. It’s always here. Allow space for it. A peace and calm slowly began seeping in. Spreading. It felt like a small warm soft sun the size of a softball. There was nowhere to go. Nothing to really do. The rain continued. I laid there for a while. Outside of the mind, outside of my own logic, I was able to calm down.
And then I wondered, is this peace? Yes. . . it is.
I suppose this is the magic or mystery that practicing makes space for. You’ve got to know to look inside because a storm may arrive at dawn for a conversation.
Grant me the peace that surpasses understanding
The peace that comes when love has won from within me
The following day, exhausted yet somehow restored, the story continued. I dial into the study session. (Remember several weeks ago I mentioned I’m studying the Gospel of Mary with theologian Meggan Watterson.) And this is the passage we examine. Synchronicity.
When the Blessed One had said these things, he greeted them all, saying, ‘Peace be with you! Bear my peace within yourselves! Beware that no one lead you astray saying, ‘Look over here!’ Or ‘Look over there!’ For the Child of Humanity is within you! Follow it! Those who seek it will find it. (The first section of Mary 4:1-11) [emphasis my own]
Meggan spoke of peace as a silence; silence the moment love has won from within. When all the egoic voices lose their grasp. It’s a dark feminine pilgrimage of reclaiming the capacity to know and hear love from within ourselves. To consciously and actively go inside and become aware of the miraculous nature that exists in the shadows.
Breath, touch, and sound were guideposts which led me further in. Somehow at the height of the storm, in the fading light of the afternoon, I stumbled into my own solace.
We don’t control the time when ‘grace drops’, she continued. Peace arrives. And when it does (as briefly as it was the previous day) it’s an otherworldly place. I can only describe it as the ability to hold multiple, seemingly impossible, realities at once. I can cultivate the possibility for peace to enter. I can be devotional about it. I can till the soil and sow the seeds but I can’t control the rain.
When the storms return (and they will) and fear starts to swell, may I be gentle and yield to the reservoir of peace within.
Yours, Erin