Severe Weather Warning: What Does it Matter?

"What does it matter?"  That's the response I received yesterday when I mentioned to a friend that nasty weather was looming on the horizon. "Be careful"  is what I said to her after hearing the NOAA forecast. There is a church in Santa Fe I  think about during severe weather season when I watch news interviews with folks who had near misses on our restless planet  full of of tsunamis of  floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, landslides and lightning strikes. And when I  heard her comment I thought about that church again but my feelings were not of prayer.  More than a few people tell interviewers they prayed they would be safe - and in the end they were. All well and good.  But there is a  powerful message on that church, and it's not in the form of a sermon or a placard. It's a lightning rod. A lightning rod that protects a recognizable religious icon perched high on that historic church. Kind of makes one pause and think as I did when I first saw it last May in during a New  Mexico wilderness medical conference.  And I read that 'better put a lightning rod on our church' message very very clearly. The message? Prayer is not enough. Nor is ignorance of nature and her unstable atmospheric moods the wisest thing to do. Lightning is one of nature's most deadly phenomenon. We average 58 lightning deaths a year with hundreds more injured. And 100% of those killed last year in the USA were killed out of doors. A powerful thunderstorm is on the horizon.That's what it matters.