When my mother was a little girl, hardly three feet tall, she was at an old-fashioned "tent revival" with her parents. She was the only person with a seat right next to the open flap of the tent, almost outside, where she could see better than anyone else that a major storm was brewing. She witnessed up close the blowing rain, the swinging trees, the bright flashes of lightning, and of course the cracks and booms of thunder.
Being so young and small, she was deeply impressed by these powerful events she'd never experienced before. The preacher at the front was exclaiming loudly how God was right outside, creating the lightning and thunder, using it to show us his power. She watched in awe, fully convinced God was right outside doing all this, just like the preacher said.
From that day forward, her conscious awareness of God's presence and power grew steadily. Filled with that awareness, she put a protection on me as an infant that has lasted throughout my life. There have been at least ten times where something has happened that would normally have killed someone, yet I escaped each time totally unharmed. And even though she was seldom near when such things happened, there's no doubt in my mind I remained untouched due to the magical protection my mother placed on me at the beginning of my life.
One day at the farm, she and my father were sitting out on their porch when a huge black thunderstorm came rolling in. My mother took to praying, asking God to send the storm right back where it came from so the farmers' crops would not be damaged. Amazingly, those dark storm clouds reversed their direction as they watched, heading straight back where they'd come from. This event was talked about by family and friends for weeks. I heard various comments such as "That was so amazing" and "I've never seen that happen before."
Back when I was a little boy, hardly three feet tall, I was standing near an upstairs window when a flash of lightning shot by, followed quickly by a crack of thunder and rolling rumble so loud it rattled the glass in the windows. I was scared and started to cry, but moments later Mother came running into the room, saw my tears, and understood why. And instead of doing what you'd expect a mother to do—hugging her child while patting his back with promises everything will be ok—she realized this was my storm, my day "at the edge of the tent"—my chance to see that God was doing it, just as she had seen so many years before.
She swept me up under one arm and quickly trotted down the stairs to the dining room that had windows facing the direction the storm was blowing in from. She sat me down right by one of those windows, raised the glass all the way up to allow the wind and rain to come pouring in on us, then leaned into the window with me right beside her. "Make the lightning flash, God!" she shouted. Almost immediately, the lightning flashed brightly. Then she shouted, "Now make the thunder roar!" and just as quickly, the thunder loudly roared in through the window. "Now make the lightning flash again!" It did so right away. "Now make more thunder boom and rumble, God!" The thunder boomed and rumbled, exactly as she had commanded.
As she was having this conversation with God, warm summer wind and rain were pouring in on us, soaking us both. Mother asked me to come closer. Placing an arm around my back, she continued calling to God and He gave her exactly what she asked for, every time.
I was no longer scared at all. God was caressing my skin with his warm rain and I loved it. We both loved it, almost like taking a warm shower. I fully believed God was right there near the window just outside, listening to my mother's words and following her every instruction. Mother knew how I felt, as she vividly remembered being the person three feet tall at the edge of the storm, and now she was passing that wonderful experience on to me.
In her song Unwritten, Natasha Bedingfield poetically explains the concept so beautifully with the words, "Open the dirty window . . . Release your inhibitions. Feel the rain on your skin. No one else can feel it for you. Only you can let it in. . . . Drench yourself in words unspoken. Live your life with arms wide open." I agree 1000%, such a beautiful and joyous song.
Because of my very young age, the belief that the weather can obey us went deep into my subconscious where it took on the power to do so, as had first been true with my mother thirty years earlier. On a number of occasions, the weather has responded to my thoughts with amazing accuracy.
One such event was in Wizard Wells, Texas, where we were doing a Native American sweat ceremony. I was given the responsibility of making the weather ties, a process that involves making a set of tiny bags of tobacco and placing a prayer into each one, asking that the weather meet our needs.
I took my job very seriously, working alone in a separate room. With one tie, I prayed for summer rain, vividly imagining a downpour of rain cleansing both the people and the land and helping to keep things growing even through the dry season. With the next four ties I prayed for the safety of our property, with each prayer imagining a different corner of our property being struck by a bolt of lightning, the four strikes together forming a shield of protection over all our land. Lastly, I prayed for myself, imagining myself in a rain forest sitting in front of a gentle stream of water bubbling over rocks as I sat beneath a fern gently dripping cleansing rainwater onto my back.
Naturally, I intended for my visual imagery to strengthen the spiritual effect of my prayers. I was making no effort at all to cause my visual imagery to become a physical reality. But . . .
It had reached noontime on that hot summer day. The air was still, the sky totally clear as far as we could see, which wasn't far due to high hills on all sides. Everyone took their places, sitting around the rock pit inside the sweat lodge, and the red-hot rocks were brought in with deer antlers to create the heat for our sweat. The first water was sprinkled from a cup to make the first steam, officially beginning the ceremony! It was at that point that a summer thunderstorm quickly rolled in from an unseen location beyond the hills.
Instead of a normal sweat, every image I'd mentally pictured while placing the prayers into the weather ties became our physical reality! (1) Heavy rain—really heavy rain—soon began falling. (2) Separated by a minute or two, there were four very loud cracks of thunder nearby that the fireperson outside later told us accompanied four lightning bolts that struck each of the four corners of our property. (3) Then, with so much water falling so fast, a stream formed and ran right in through our lodge door, across the ground in front of me, bubbling over the hot rocks as it flowed on its way through and out the backside of the lodge. (4) As I sat, still dry but fully astonished, warm rainwater began dripping on the center of my back through a small leak in the lodge roof.
It was all there—every single thing I'd mentally imagined while making the weather prayer ties. The magic didn't miss a beat!
But the stream of water coming through soon filled the rock pit, completely cooling the rocks, so we had no way to continue the sweat. We then filed out of the lodge, trekked through the rain washing over us, and returned to our main building nearby. Later, I told everyone what I'd done, about the prayers and the imagery placed along with them into the weather prayer ties. No one said a word at the time; they just gave me some really strange looks.
I have since read at least two accounts that state weather is one of the easiest forces to control with magic. They both gave the example of sitting or lying outside in the grass, choosing a spot of sky, and mentally causing a cloud to form where none was present, or causing a cloud that is already there to vanish from view. But obviously, so much more is possible beyond just making or dissolving one little cloud. For as with all magic, how much can be achieved is limited only by the imagination.