Signs Point To Coming Change And Remind Us That We Know Not Where Wind Blows

By Michael H. Brown

It's in the wind. This morning, there is smoke -- not fog, but smoke, and ashes on the cars.

I live in Flagler County in Florida and wildfires ripped through 3,000 acres this week and still burn. The smoke arrives here from 15 miles away.

It is the driest in some parts in 100 years.

Alligators are fleeing dry creeks. Birds are scarce. When they are noticed, they are making sounds of warning. Otherwise, there is an unusual quiet. The quiet before the storm? There are few insects. The other day, and again today, just a big dead bumblebee, an occasional mosquito.

What is it about those bees that have been vanishing? Is there any relevance? Across America and in other countries, honeybees -- crucial to pollination -- have disappeared.

A parasite? A virus? Chemicals? "The bees were gone," said one beekeeper, David Hackenberg, who tended to them in Florida. "The honey was still there. There's young brood (eggs) still in the hive. Bees just don't do that."

On that November night last year in the Florida field where he wintered his bees, Hackenberg found 400 hives empty. Another thirty hives were "disappearing, dwindling or whatever you want to call it," says a news report, and their beehives were "full of a fungus nobody's ever seen before." The discovery by Hackenberg was the first "buzz" about what seems like an invisible plague.

In Central England, it was the warmest April, they reckon, since the 1600s. In Spain, swarms of vultures are attacking living animals -- killing adult cattle.

Everywhere you turn, there is something: twisters, torrential rain, drought. Italy has declared a drought emergency. There is bizarre conduct. There are truly worrisome signs that what started as taking Christ out of Christmas is rapidly spreading to taking Him out of everything they can take Him out of (despite public opinion).

In Europe, where they are forming the first true foundation of world government, the parliament overseeing the European Union passed a resolution that basically condemned Poland for not accepting homosexuality.

In the U.S., they want to do the same: make it a "hate crime" to cite evil, where evil is.

There is paralysis.

And as we stand still, as we do nothing, the wind blows.

This is how we know the season.

In Florida, unusual drought has been followed by violent storms -- thunderstorms, tropical systems, hurricanes.

What does it mean? Where does it go?

As Jesus said so powerfully, so mysteriously, "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going" [John 3:8].

That is where we are now: feeling the wind, hearing it, even seeing it -- when it is filled with smoke.

Where the wind comes so does turbulence but the wind is also a sign of the presence of the Blessed Mother.

Where evil is, there is always good to battle it. The Virgin sweeps in.

A battle is fought. The good win, in the end.

What does she tell us? Did not a black tear -- what looked like a black tear -- appear recently on a statue of the Pieta in Orlando, just up the road from those fires?

The phenomenon has been declared "non-supernatural" by the diocese but also a cause for introspection.

Natural or not, what would a black tear mean? Isn't that now a big step up from the simple plain tears reported now in so many statues, on so many pictures?

The world is about to move in a new direction.

There are about to be new players.

The role of the U.S. will change.

Others will rise.

That's the view from here.

Mystic Maria Esperanza once said that the Oriental races would rise up and we are seeing that as China becomes a super-Japan but with hostility.

Exciting times! How do we approach it?

With love, with humility -- which provide us protection. With a positive attitude.

No one should run for the woods. It is time to stand ground. It is time to spread that blessed salt. It is an exhilarating if serious time for those who receive the grace to spread the anointing of Jesus.

Spread it! Go forth, into the hinterlands. Take back the corners of the cities. Bless all that you see. If you are a priest, bless the rivers, the lakes. Bless the ocean. We could use all the Holy Water we can get. Let it rise with that wind.

And let the wind mark not the fire of distrust but the movement as at Pentecost of the Holy Spirit.

5/4/07