Summer Rain

It’s 9:30 in the morning as I write this on a late June Saturday, but the sky is dark with rumbling clouds.  It is necessary to have a lamp on.

I love storms.  Some don’t, I understand, but I do.  They create a sense of immediacy that forces us into the present moment.  Plans are changed, to-do lists get altered, grass goes unmown as we shift into the “now-ness” inherent in the storm.  Instead of doing yoga, I check the local radar.

After the heat of the recent ungodly month, the cloud cover and the drenching that cool the earth are especially welcome.  Despite the fact that it seems unseasonable and yet another undeniable manfestation of changing weather patterns that are happening whether we admit them or not, I embrace it and say, “Let it pour.”

Only recently have I felt a return to myself.  The daily denials and seemingly simple compromises parched my soul like the unrelenting oven of a Tennessee summer heat wave.  The deeper the cracks in the scorched earth of my spirit, the higher I turned up the heat.  For you see, I controlled this sun.  I was, and am, the weather god of my own personal environment.  Perhaps I was conducting an experiment to find my own boiling point.  Perhaps I simply believed that I should be able to endure, like a nomad in the desert with nothing but a camel and the map of the stars.  Or perhaps I had heat stroke.  Who can say.

For some reason as yet not completely known to me, I reached for shade.  The little weather god within said ’nuff and brought the rain without my conscious command.   And sometimes this internal climate change feels stormy and scary and dark and dangerous, but I also can feel things starting to grow again.

Like a summer rain, the return to self soothes and sustains.  Let it pour.