Tuesday afternoon, the storm came rolling in across the fields.  I put my laptop (and wallet, phone, etc.) in the car, and then walked out into it to watch the rain sweep in – the cooling breeze, the fat drops, the smell of the storm… and then, it was here. falling, crashing, lighting, thunder, rain falling in huge drops that almost stung like hail, filling the world with gray and water and blessing and baptism… and I stayed out there for the next 20 minutes or so until it stopped, and I practically skipped back to the car, soaking, dripping, sopping wet.  It was glorious.

There’s a line from a Marilynne Robinson novel – “…it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash…”

I felt it then. Beautiful. Life-giving. Gift. Blessing.

“Water is always an invitation to immersion [for me], an immersion with a quality of totality, since it would accept all of me, as I am…

No rain falls that I do not at once hear in the sound of the falling water an invitation to come to the wedding. It is rare that I do not answer. A walk in an evening rain in any setting is to walk in the midst of God’s loving attention to his earth, and, like a baptism, is no simple washing, but a communication of life. When you hurry in out of the rain, I hurry out into it, for it is a sign that all is well, that God loves, that good is to follow. If suffering a doubt, I find myself looking to rain as a good omen. And in rain, I always hear singing, wordless chant rising and falling…

Most people love rain, water. Snow charms all young hearts. Only when you get older and bones begin to feel dampness, when snow becomes a traffic problem and a burden in the driveway, when wet means dirt – then the poetry takes flight and God’s love play is not noted.

But I am still a child and have no desire to take on the ways of death. I shall continue to heed water’s invitation, the call of the rain.

We are in love and lovers are a little mad.”

~ Matthew Kelty, Flute Solo: Reflections of a Trappist Hermit, pp. 117-19