Resounding Love

And if a little hobbit were to tell you that for the past two hours the hobbit house's adobe walls have shook so that a picture fell to the floor and crashed like the thunder, that the lightning proved it can light a room in the darkest hour of night brighter than the sun a midday, and that the hobbit has stood beneath the shower head of the sky would you even begin to feel what the morning has been like?  It was as if the rain fortress in the sky had to be dynamited to be released upon the drought and fire ridden earth of my little state and city. And so it falls this morning. Soaking into the night covered ground before the sun can find and drink. Sometimes prayers are answered with whispers. Sometimes the Love that answers bellows "Hear my voice and remember!" Sometimes tears and rain, thunder and heart beats, lightning and smiles are the same.

"The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours" ~ Mary Oliver

Falling Movement

Thich Nhat Hanh observed that we only call rain, "rain" because it is falling and wind, "wind" because it is blowing. That led my simple brain to ponder the thread, that we have names for waves, rain and wind but think how different the words can be.  At night the sound of crashing waves or rain can lull you to sleep. The same sounds terrifying to one lost at sea or in the mountains.  And to ponder, is not nature's breath, the wind, always present, but we only give it a name when it moves? Is not her life sustaining moisture always present but we only give it a name when it falls?  And are not the waves, rain and wind the same but we call them storms when we think them strong?  And when your day is planned outdoors, a "nice" day means no rain but to a farmer looking at his parched fields, a "nice" perhaps even miraculous, day would be for the rain to fall.  And finally, all the words we use have movement - rain, wind, waves, stormy.  But a day of non-movement, stillness, blue skies and calm, we simply call 'nice' yet the movement of life is still there. 

And so, I leave my simple thread, to know the buffeting storms against my heart as nothing more than movement.  Movement, without which life ceases to exist. Like the moisture in the air and natures breath, the pain is simply falling.