The Little Cumulus Clouds that Could: What the Forming of an Isolated Thunderstorm Taught Me about Persistence in Community

One thing is for certain. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear, and if the student is open to Creation and its Creator, then there is no end of the daily learning.

This was Monday, outside the window of the room where I work from home. I was delighted by the view after two days of hard rain ... but those distant cumulus clouds, way back in the field of view there by Sutro Tower, had a surprise for me...

When thunderheads develop, they literally go up looking like a bomb has been dropped ... the convective heat reflected from the ground going through cooler air condenses in that way. Those two little cumulus clouds, way back there, were trying to form a pulse thunderstorm!

San Francisco is not the place to see this, in general ... if I lived in the Midwest in the spring, and had seen a cloud field like the one that greeted me that morning, I would not have been surprised. However, because of the stormy conditions in the state, and because I was looking south where a lot of that weather was persisting, I had spotted the northern edge of that remaining energy.

So much for me working efficiently yesterday ... to my surprise, that cumulus cloud now becoming a tower actually began to form an anvil -- the top had reached the edge of the stratosphere!

It made it to anvil stage, with a secondary tower forming behind it, to my surprise!

... but I knew it was too thin to make it much further, because the upper-level winds now had access to shear the tower apart. Sure enough ...

... the anvil sheared off, and all that remained was a heap of clouds.

However, the first tower, in departing, fell back behind the second...

... and to my utter surprise, the two merged into a much thicker core and began to form a second anvil, while further reinforcements were also marching across the horizon toward them.

Now it was about here that I remembered the work I was not getting done all that well, being riveted by the meteorological rarity at my window ... but Monday was the day I began a new project that will require not just a beginning but persistent, regular investment of time and creativity over months and months before I can expect to see big results. That work had taken me back, in my mind, to my beginning on Hive's predecessor in the year before Hive itself ... Steem was dropping that whole time because of where the crypto cycle was in addition to Steem's own challenges ... so many times I might have left, but I gritted my teeth and kept posting and engaging even as things deteriorated -- but then Hive went up suddenly, and blossomed, though no one thought that in the deep field of crypto that it would survive.

I stayed, and at last began to see all things thriving around me even as the world itself went into chaos. That taught me so much about the value of persistence that I had not considered consciously before.

Now, embarking on this new process which will require all of the persistence I have learned in a lifetime, I also have come to appreciate, because of Hive, the value of the support of community -- I have to remember now that I am not alone in the path that I have chosen. Hive itself is made up of communities that are small but mighty, and together, though the world does not yet fully see us ... not all people are looking up from their work to see what is right out of their window ... and that is true everywhere.

It takes a long time, going in a slow and humble path, to be seen -- and then, even when seen, one can be seen as a threat by those who do not understand ... like I said, the beginning of a cumulus cloud becoming a tower looks, for those who have no knowledge of meteorology, like a bomb has been dropped -- though quite silently, of course! And sometimes, even when one makes a splash like that, one's individual effort is not enough ... it takes community of like minds for some things. .

By the time I collected all these thoughts, that tower had successfully formed an anvil that would not shear off right away, and other cumulus clouds were being brought up to join it ...

... and it just kept growing ...

... until THIS was happening ...

... and at last the light shone silver over me because THIS HAPPENED:

I was still too far away off to the north to get any rain -- which was good because I had an appointment to take care of later that day and I hoped for a walking commute ... so, under that silver-dappled sky I went, astounded by the little cumulus clouds that got with their friends and COULD ... and was instructed by them to stay in the path, to stay persistent in community, on Hive, on other platforms on which I now have opportunity to work, and in life, walking humbly and steadily on with those also of like mind!