A WHAT from that blue sky?!

After an awe inspiring thunderstorm last night followed by a gloriously bright rainbow against a gray sky backdrop, today was beautiful and sunny, the world awash in impossibly bright colors.

(from the backyard, after we got home)

T and I drove down to Amarillo for some coffee shop reading and writing, and a grocery trip (organic produce is hard to come by outside the city). 


Along the drive we discussed nature and thought and God and plans and timelines, until all the sudden there was a dark cloud on the right horizon. 


I pointed to it as we sang along to his ipod, making a yucky face, indicating that the factory over there was polluting the beautiful day.
Ew.
Except, a moment later, I realized that the factory cloud I'd pointed to had just moved to be just next to the actual factory, rather than covering it.


...wait a second...


And another 30 seconds passed, where the mysterious "cloud" on the ground moved again - 


-and then I realized. That was no cloud.


It was a tornado.


Yesiree. When my sister and I drove up to Napa for a debaucherous weekend in the spring of '08, there were tons of little twisters on the side of the road, stirring up the fields where crops were not quite beginning to appear. M is also a weekend skydiver, and has seen dust devils below her on the ground as she's floated beneath her chute, hoping to avoid one (having that fickle circular wind grab the thin material of her parachute would certainly mean injury, maybe worse). 


I know what one looks like.


And that WAS one. The super clear day made most of it invisible, but we could see that wide bowl shaped funnel of thin blue-black soil from the fields where it was dancing, puffing out a thinner cloud beneath, along the surface of the ground.


And it was coming closer.


So I took a breath and said a little prayer, and by the time I was done, it was dissipating, so no worries. I learned a moment later that T had never had a minute's apprehension, but was excited to be seeing one this close. Yeah, it was close. And we saw it. Well, the bottom of it.


Then we went and had salads followed by chai tea whilst doing some reading and writing (I started perusing the Gospel of Thomas, which is awesome, just saying), and got groceries, and now we're back. No worse for wear. 


But who needs caffeine when you've got a tornado filling up your windshield to wake you up?!


Not I!


Happy Friday, have a marvelous weekend, and here's today's quote:
In those days, we finally chose to walk like giants and hold the world in arms grown strong with love
And there may be many things we forget in the days to come,
But this will not be one of them.
— Brian Andreas