........and then there
is rain. Below is a small excerpt from a longer piece, summarised partly, but not
written by me of course—but non-the-less my love for it is as intense as that
of the author.
Perhaps I am a child of rain, of the ocean, of water itself. I, through
this realization, or more precisely; revelation— have come to terms with my very existence. So, in a way rain,
as is the ocean, is a symbolic anthem
of my faith, my belief, my love - the song of my actual
soul. The longing of my spirit for my home; homesickness perhaps.
Our life is a short journey of mystery, an adventure,
a quest of the eternal, but having true meaning only in being aware of
the—“eternal now”. Rain being a symbol of the very moment of awakening for me. Drip, drip, drip; a constant
reminder of being, a messenger of thoughts with wings—each drop having a significant
meaning, an actual implication for the very essence of my
spirit—a special communication from God to me, as not to
forget whence I have come from and whence I; as all living things shall return.
Each rain drop is a song of thankfulness, of gratefulness and a joyful offering to
Him from whom all things spring forth; from that
eternal fountain of divine love. Indebted beyond measure for all the gifts I have and which I am ever receiving.......I am so blessed indeed for being loved! I am truly undeserving. My school`s motto was; Quid retribuam- "What shall I render?"-says it all.
Yes—rain is the eternal festival
of God.
Let me
say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and
distribute for
money. By "they" I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is
a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no
price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way
to make something actual is to place it on the market. The
time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is
still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.
The rain
I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the woods with an immense and
confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with
inconsistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again
and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to
recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer.
The
night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous
virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think
of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching
the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and
crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped
the hillside!
What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at
night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech,
the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all
over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!
Nobody
started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this
rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.
But I am
also going to sleep, because here in this wilderness I have learned how to
sleep again. Here I am not alien. The trees I know, the night I know, the rain
I know. I close my eyes and instantly sink into the whole rainy world of which
I am a part, and the world goes on with me in it, for I am not alien to it. I
am alien to the noises of cities, of people, to the greed of machinery that
does not sleep, the hum of power that eats up the night. Where rain, sunlight
and darkness are contemned, I cannot sleep. I do not trust anything that has
been fabricated to replace the climate of woods or prairies.
I can
have no confidence in places where the air is first fouled and then cleansed,
where the water is first made deadly and then made safe with other poisons.
There is nothing in the world of buildings that is not fabricated, and if a
tree gets in among the apartment houses by mistake it is taught to grow
chemically. It is given a precise reason for existing. They put a sign on it
saying it is for health, beauty, perspective; that it is for peace, for
prosperity; that it was planted by the mayor's daughter.
All of this is
mystification. The city itself lives on its own myth. Instead of waking up and
silently existing, the city people prefer a stubborn and fabricated dream; they
do not care to be a part of the night, or to be merely of the world. They have
constructed a world outside the world, against the world, a world of mechanical
fictions which contemn nature and seek only to use it up, thus preventing it
from renewing itself and man.
