There is no experience quite as powerful as a Saskatchewan storm cloud unleashing all its voracious fury on your single head – alarming your nerves, alerting your sensations, triggering your fear and wonder. This is the sound of rain. This is the feeling of water. This is the power of God.

The darkness of my Val Marie home in the night, blanketed by the sound of water splashing against the water-logged bentonite clay outside my window. The splashes of light from outside and the pounding symphony of creation as it bangs against the door and the grassland hills in the distance. A crackle. A boom. Pitter patter. Its mourns for an Adagio and then, in an instant, accelerando.

What is the tempo marking of nature?

Is this a cry? Or a celebration?

How can I sleep with this noise? The sensation of energy in the air? Life is happening now. How do I sleep? This is the meeting of the skeleton of nature - the sky, the earth, the clouds in between. It is my delightful purgatory to be stuck here in Val Marie, happening now. How do I sleep?

Encountering God is worth it in Saskatchewan.