And very black clouds.

There’s a hurricane out there.  It may even have made landfall by the time you read this—although they say it’s moving very slowly—so maybe not.

There are going to be a lot of miracles this week connected to Sandy.  There could easily be a lot of not so nice things happening as well. I’ve heard about some of them already.  A playwright friend whose reading, long prepared and anticipated, had to be canceled and may have difficulty rescheduling.  Another friend who gets a much needed extension on a project because a class can’t meet when subways are shutting down and mandatory evacuations are proceeding.

It’s easy, under circumstances like these, to take it personally.  People have a tendency to do what I call omenizing.  (Sometimes I make up my own words  I’m a writer.  I’m allowed.)  I’ve even done a bit of omenizing myself.

This really good thing happened!  Fate is on my side and everything will be perfect.

This really bad thing happened!  The universe is out to get me.

Oddly enough, I thought this was going to be a post about the irony and the luck involved in moving from New York to Florida and finding that the two biggest hurricanes of recent years are hitting the City instead of the oft-troubled and occasionally inaptly named Sunshine State.  And I thought I’d be segueing into a hope that there would be even bigger miracles—that the storm would turn out into the ocean, missing my fellow Americans and all the ships at sea.

But, as I write this, a little quote comes to mind that I first read in one of Robert Fulghum’s books, and I think this is the larger idea.

Sometimes it rains on the just.  I believe that.
Sometimes it rains on the unjust.  I believe that, too.
But I also believe that sometimes it just rains.
Neither God nor Justice or belief has anything to do with it.
—Anonymous

I think the fact that humans have the capacity to evolve to the point where we do not have to attribute these things to superstitious beliefs is, maybe, the biggest miracle.

And we can still hope that no one is hurt in the coming days.

Hope hard.

Hope never hurts.