I am not a good sport about the wind. It has all but ruined so many events over my lifetime. It pricks your skin and swirls up dust and litter, messes with your spirits and, more importantly, your hair. All you could ever do in bad wind was to wait it out, preferably inside, and keep it in perspective. It was not a plague of frogs, and it would die down. My atheist father’s great moral teachings always saw me through bad weather: Don’t be an ass. Make sure everyone eats. Find something to read. Go for a hike. Pick up after yourself.

But what Bob Dylan called the idiot wind shows no signs of dying down. And Stephen Miller is a one-man plague of frogs. Some days the wind from the White House feels like it will blow away everything good and beautiful and legal, while sucking in obscene amounts of cash.

Yet maybe this torrential wind holds some answers and hope for us, gobsmacked though we may be as passengers in a bus driven by a convicted sexual abuser and freelance traitor.

We all have memories of events that the wind seemed to ruin, making a mockery of our best efforts to dazzle and manage. But maybe at some point we noticed the fancy napkins flying about like paper airplanes, and just had to shake our heads at the whole ridiculousness of even trying, another performance of the theatre of the absurd.

A wind moves things around. Seeds would not get scattered without wind. There would be so much less beauty and surprise. And exploration: viking invasions; the Kon-Tiki expedition; Magellan. The wind gives us fresh air. The wind is the breath of the universe.

We’ve come through such harsh and bitter winds before and we will again, if we stick together and don’t give up. It is tempting to stay inside until it passes, but we need you. You, me, we the people. Frederick Buechner wrote, “Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid."

We need you to raise a little money for the ACLU, to rally the troops for the next No Kings rally. We need you to send off anything you can manage to election integrity foundations and the National Immigration Rights Organization and Journalists Without Borders. We need you to pick up litter in your town and to help get food to the poor. These actions will make you happier and more hopeful than you would have thought possible.

We need voices raised in laughter so quislings in the White House will hear us. Nothing makes narcissists crazier than to be mocked.

As the winds blow around us, we have got to help each other stay focused. Not obsessed, but paying attention. It connects us to spirit and humanity and reality. There is a lot of hopeful stuff going on in America’s reality these days, namely the polls, the courts, the rising disgust towards John Roberts’ Dred Scott court. That and the collapse of Mr. Trump’s MAGA base, almost as fun as the Reflecting Pool. Those big babies!  Such fairweather fanatics. A few small issues are only to be expected: economic collapse, skyrocking inflation, pointless foreign wars, surrender to the Iranians. You know, the usual.

Yes, the howl and bluster throw us off balance and prick our skin, and some days we can’t remember what to do. So, we ask around. The whole system works because we are not all nuts on the same day. So we carry on. We do what’s possible. We are practical, simple, and kind. These actions will save us. Decency is a windbreaker.

You don't mind the wind quite so much when you’re old, or at least you resist it less. Wow, we have a lot of wind today. It all just comes. When we are younger, we would like reality to be better than it is. Then we learn to accept whatever's coming.

When the wind dies down, and it always does, the flowers bow to each other.