The Release of Rain
It’s like I’m walking in the midst of a downpour. The rain is heavy and soaks into the fabric of my clothing. It drenches my skin and pours off my fingertips, my wrist, my elbow... who’s to say. I may just be the waterfall. I’m not sure, but the water keeps falling and here I am standing.
It’s easy to think that the rain will come to an end, but that doesn’t honor the place I’m in. It doesn’t shed light on the foliage in the rain forest as animals take cover and I remain where I am in the midst of heavy rain. The forest floor, wet and mossy. Covered in water and enchantment in the midst of puddle and mess. I notice that where I stand is a moment of difference to where I stood when it wasn’t wet.
I kneel and sink my hands into the pooling mud. My forearms respond to the allure, going deeper down to my elbows. It’s here that I feel a rush of belonging. A freedom as I sink in and then pull myself out. Like I’m breathing with the earth, falling in and under and around the roots of trees. I’m breathing as I come up along the stems of tropical flowers and pull myself out of dirt and puddle.
And there I realize that I’m dirty and it makes the heavy rainfall worthwhile. The extreme downpour a welcoming forecast so that I can feel what it’s like to be dirty and then clean. To experience the grain of dirt and grime fall away. To see my own body as a ripple in the forest that leaves footprints, but then watch as those footprints get erased with time and no trace.
I feel traces of life in the midst of each cool gulp. I am tickled by the water that falls down back behind my ear. All of a sudden, I see the magic in water and not so much the flame. And I’m not afraid.
There is meaning as water eagerly releases the soil from drought’s unyielding clutch. As it inclines to fully saturate and release the refreshing scent of dry earth becoming wet. Petrichor, a chemical response and yet a wonder still in many ways. It’s a release of turmoil to fully saturate and make clean the dry, cracking, begging earth. So no longer is it the earth that cries, but the sky who answers.
