Tag: Rain

Water Whispers

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

… And still the syllables of water whisper:
The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
In the dark room; and in your heart I find
One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—
Orion in a cobweb, and the World.
~Conrad Aiken from “Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise the Rain”

I lay silent under the comforter listening, listening to the constancy of rain.  No let up, no diminishing, just all night long whispering in the dark — water falling from on high.

John Updike says: “Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.”

So I feel blessed by communion with this rainy grace, lots and lots and lots of descending grace, a zillion silver drops falling together to bathe my parched and thirsty world, keep it cleansed and refreshed.

I look for –and find — the world in a raindrop.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Savoring Gray

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

I like these cold, gray winter days.  Days like these let you savor a bad mood.
–  Bill Watterson in Calvin and Hobbes

After four days of very cold crisp sunny days, it is raining tonight and predicted to rain for the next week.  We are back to gray and miserable, right where we were for most of December.

What a relief.

There has been too much perfection for too long:  four days of 360 degree views of snowy mountains and foothills that gleam in the sun, glistening crystalline fields of frost, sparkling clear waters in Puget Sound,  and bright blue cloudless skies is hard for any northwest native to tolerate.    It is hard work keeping up the smiles and general good humor that goes with excellent weather.   There is always a clear expectation that one must be outside enjoying the rare sunny day, when it is far more appealing to curl up with a good book and a warm dog by a roaring fire, pretending not to notice how nice it is out.

We native Washingtonians are congenitally grumpy people, born to splash through puddles and lose our boots in footwear-sucking mud.    We don’t carry umbrellas because they are useless when our horizontal rain comes from the side, not from the top.   We wear sunglasses on mid-winter sunny days because we can’t possibly get our eyes to adjust to so much brightness.   We wear hoods, sometimes even when we are indoors, just in case,  because you never know.

Gray is preferred.   Gray with wet and cold is even better.   No one even questions a bad mood on days like this.   A good mood would be highly suspect.

So I savor the opportunity to be disgruntled with such obvious justification as a rainy evening.

Downright crabby.  No apologies needed.  No excuses given.
It’s almost enough to put a smile on my face.

photo by Josh Scholten

photo by Josh Scholten

Transcendent Moments

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“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”
~ John Milton

Our farm yard looked like it had a retro remodel update this past week by heavy winds and rain, the green sod now covered with a mottled yellow brown shag carpet of leaves.   This transformation is temporary as this new carpet will soon start to rot under the burden of endless days of wintry drizzle and freezing weather.

Today’s epiphany:  only 8 months ago, none of these leaves even existed.  They were mere potential in bud form, about to burst and grow in a silent awesome explosion of green and chlorophyll.   After their brief tenure as shade and protection and fuel factory for their tree, last week they rained to the ground in torrents, letting go of the only (and so transient) security they had known.

Now they become compost, returning their substance to the soil to feed the roots of the trees that gave them life to begin with.

Recycled by transcendent death,
so momentary,
so momentous.

Melancholy Days

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photo by Josh Scholten

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked wood, and meadows brown and sear.
William Cullen Bryant

These are the dark and sodden days we can scarcely recall while basking in the lightness of June when sun graces us 19 hours a day.  There is no way but to ease into this a few minutes at a time, otherwise the shock would be too great.  The howling wind continually knocks and batters, the rain beats mercilessly at the window panes, the puddles stand deeper than they appear, the leaves now thoroughly shaken from embarrassed branches.  There is no remnant of summer civility and frivolity left; we must adapt or cry trying, only adding to the pervasive sogginess.

Nevertheless, melancholy days have their usefulness and there are times they can be a source of joy when snuggled deep under quilts, safe, dry and warm.  Without the stark contrast, the light time of year would become routine and under-appreciated, only another sunny day.

That never happens here.

We celebrate the light with real thanksgiving and in turn can acknowledge the darkness makes our gratitude more genuine.

We are privileged to live the paradox:  there is gladness in our sadness.

Emptying Like A Cloud

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God empties himself
into the earth like a cloud.
God takes the substance, contours
of a man, and keeps them,
dying, rising, walking,
and still walking
wherever there is motion.
Annie Dillard from “Feast Days”

We soon will enter the season of Advent, an opportunity to reflect on a God who “takes the substance, contours of a man”, as He “empties himself into the earth like a cloud.”  Like drought-stricken parched ground, we prepare to respond to the drenching of the Spirit, ready to spring up with growth anew.

He walked among us before His dying, and rising up, He walked among us again, appearing where least expected, sharing a meal, burning our hearts within us, inviting us to touch and know Him.

His invitation remains open-ended.

I think of that every time the clouds open and empty.   He freely falls to earth, soaking us completely, through and through.

photo by Josh Scholten

Companions in Adversity

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

When shrieked
The bleak November winds, and smote the woods,
And the brown fields were herbless, and the shades
That met above the merry rivulets
Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still; they seemed
Like old companions in adversity.
~William Cullen Bryant  in A Winter Piece

When the winds start to howl
and leaves are flying through the air
like birds on the wing heading south,
when branches snap
and trunks bend to the point of breaking
when the ground is hopelessly barren
and the hills are nothing
but continuing shades of gray
descending from the sky
when the sun disappears for days
and the rains are continuous

I love it all still;

knowing we are in this together
when the times are tough and
the mud is thick
and obstacles fall in our way
even to the end of time
as we travel this road
like old companions
broken, withered, splintered
but sharing the journey
wherever it blows us.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Cozy Rain

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The best kind of rain, of course, is a cozy rain. This is the kind … of rain that falls on a day when you’d just as soon stay in bed a little longer, write letters or read a good book by the fire, take early tea with hot scones and jam, and look out the streaked window with complacency.
~ Susan Allen Toth

Cozy rains simply don’t happen on weekdays.  There are always things to do, places to be, people to impress, rain or shine.  On weekdays rain tends to be a drag us down,  smotheringly gray inconvenience of wet shoes, damp jackets, impossibly limp hair in school and work place.

But Saturday?  The same drops from the same cloudy skies become a comfy, tuck-me-in-once-again and snuggle down kind of rain.  There is no schedule to follow, no structured day, no required attendance, no need to even poke our nose out the door (unless living on a farm with hungry animals in the barn).

This is why most northwest natives are rainyphilics, anticipating this quiet time of year with great longing.  We are granted permission by precipitation to be complacent, slowed down, contemplative, and yes, even lazy…
*
*
*
*
*
*
Okay, enough of that.  Gotta get up, get going, laundry to do, house to clean, barn to muck out, bills to pay, meals to prepare.
Maybe tomorrow the rain will still be falling and there will be a chance to sit with hot tea cup in hand, gazing through streaked windows.
Cozy rain on a Sabbath Sunday.  With scones.  And jam.
Bliss.

photo by Lea Gibson

Responding

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photo by Josh Scholten

And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”
~Mary Oliver

Some mornings it is impossible to stay a silent observer of the world.  It demands a response.
The overnight wind and rain have pulled down nearly every leaf, the ground is carpeted with the dying evidence of last spring’s rebirth, the dropping temperatures robing the surrounding foothills and peaks in a bright new snow covering.

There can be no complacency in witnessing this startling transition in progress.   It blusters, rips, drenches, encompasses, buries. Nothing remains as it was.

And here I am, alive.
Awed.
Responding.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

 

 

Drunk on the Sun

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photo by Josh Scholten

“The happiest field in all the harvest is the field of sunflowers at their peak.
Drinking the rays and dancing in the breeze.
The saddest field is the same field, six weeks later.
Drunk on the sun and burnt with shame,
they drop their heads to hide their mane.”
― R.S. Barrington

Two months of no rain has been unprecedented here in the northwest.  We have been dry as the plains states; tractors raise vast dust clouds as they harvest the fields around our farm.  Finally, finally, precipitation is predicted in the forecast for later this week.

It has been simply too much for web foot natives like myself.  We are so inebriated from an interrupted run of perpetually sunny days, we are unable to take in any more, bloated with Vitamin D, sickened with shame at soaking in more than our allotted share of rays.  We are at serious risk of solar withdrawal when the rain starts.  I’m already shaky at the thought of gray clouds.  Shorter days and foggy mornings might bring on the dry heaves.  Hallucinations could include parades of multicolored bumbershoots multiplying like Mickey’s brooms in Fantasia’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.   Someone will need to detox us with a full spectrum seasonal affective disorder light to taper us down slowly.

Growing up here, where sun and blue skies is a rare intoxicating treat, I found myself in utter overwhelm in California during my college years.  It seemed impossible to stay inside to study, conditioned as I was to celebrating every moment of sunshine.  Who could hunker down inside with a book when the sun is out?  Where were the gray misty mildewy days on end sitting cozy next to a blazing fireplace, reading vicariously of other lands of milk and honey?

Okay, enough is enough.  We’ve had our run, we’ve had our fun, we’ve had enough sun.  We are exhausted and in need of reprieve.

Let the rains begin.

And all the people said, “Amen!”

photo by Josh Scholten

Autumn Inferred

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photo by Kim Rockdale of St. Anne’s Church steeple, Parksville, Vancouver Island

Autumn begins to be inferred
By millinery of the cloud,
Or deeper color in the shawl
That wraps the everlasting hill.
~Emily Dickinson in “Summer Begins to Have the Look”

Summer is waning and wistful;  it has the look of packing up, and moving on without bidding adieu or looking back over its shoulder.  Cooling winds have carried in darkening clouds with a hint of spit from the sky as I gaze upward to see (and smell) the change.  Rain is long overdue yet there is temptation to bargain for a little more time.  Though we are in need of a good drenching there are still onions and potatoes to pull from the ground, berries to pick before they mold on the vine, tomatoes not yet ripened, corn cobs just too skinny to pick.  I’m just not ready to wave goodbye to sun-soaked clear skies.

The overhead overcast is heavily burdened with clues of what is coming: earlier dusk, the feel of moisture, the deepening graying hues, the briskness of breezes.  There is no negotiation possible.   I need to steel myself and get ready, wrapping myself in the soft shawl of inevitability.

So autumn advances with the clouds, taking up residence where summer has left off.  Though there is still clean up of the overabundance left behind, autumn will bring its own unique plans for display of a delicious palette of hues.

The truth is we’ve seen nothing yet.

photo by Nate Gibson
a September dawn on the farm