Rain

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Where I live, rain is something that we relate to all seasons but Summer. And yet, for the past number of years it has rained quite a lot during the Summer season. As well as during the other seasons...

It seems to be a part of the changes in weather patterns that are being experienced all over the world. And it may not be as much that a certain area sees weather that is totally alien to that specific place on the earth ~ it is more that the weather is different than it has been traditionally. The dry spells seem dryer than before. The cold feels colder. Storms turn up just a bit earlier or later than usual. And yes, when it rains, it pours...

The funny thing with rain is that when it falls on a very dry soil, it might as well fall on concrete. It will run off rather than be absorbed into the earth. It starts a kind of flooding that previously was not all that common...
Then, as the rain keeps falling and the ground catches up with it, the water brings fertility to the earth. The high Summer temperatures combined with the plentiful rain allows for plants to grow pretty much anywhere!

Water indeed is life-giving.
It also is cleansing.

Just as we take a shower to clean ourselves ~ so does nature!
As the rain falls it cleanses the air, the leaves of the trees. It washes the dirt from the streets... Then when it stops raining, it seems magic has happened! Everything feels and smells fresh. And especially in Spring or Summer when the temperatures are higher ~ one can almost hear nature grow...

Most people don’t seem to like the wet weather quite as much.
We tend to carry umbrella’s ~ sort of bringing that ‘portable roof’ with us to fend off the rain; to stay dry as we rush from the car to the indoors.

Few of us seem to remember those days when we were young and enjoyed the rain and the puddles it left on the sidewalks. The pleasure the splattering of the water gave us when we jumped into those puddles... And even when we had an umbrella ~ the most fascinating thing might not have been that we stayed dry, but rather the sound of the rain drops falling on it. The subtle music that made. The rhythms that were different when it rained softly, and invigorating when the rain poured from the skies...

Rain is an important part of our lives, of nature. And equally as influential whether it falls unto the earth, bringing abundance ~ or if its rhythmic music is absent for too long, creating deserts.

Yet when it is there, every drop of rain permits life to unfurl...
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