Listening to the rain
30/09/14 05:11
Our bedroom is in the northeast corner of our house. Just outside the window there is a vertical drainpipe for the rain gutter that drains about one quarter of the water that falls on our roof. I’m not sure how much we can hear the rain on the roof of our house. There is a second story above the main living level and there is plenty of insulation in the roof. There is, however, a skylight in the entryway. It not only gives light to the area, but also enables us to hear the sound of the rain. In our bedroom, the sound of the water running down the drainpipe gives a clear message whenever it rains.
I like the sound of the rain falling. Most of the time it doesn’t disrupt my sleep at all. The last couple of nights the showers have come and gone. It isn’t the kind of rain that sets in and falls continually all day or all nigh tong. There are breaks between the showers when it isn’t raining at all. And when it rains, sometimes it rains pretty hard.
We got about 2 inches of rain yesterday and there still was enough break between showers that I got to the lake and paddled. The sun peaked out from between the clouds and there was a bit of blue sky for a few minutes. Of course I had the advantage of a day off, so I could paddle when the weather broke. I have good weather gear and I could paddle in the rain, but I haven’t really solved the problem of water spots on my glasses and some days if I pull my hood too tightly around my head, my glasses fog up with all of the humidity trapped inside of the hood. Yesterday that wasn’t a problem as I paddled.
One of the blessings of this life is the variety of weather. The hills are a good place to watch the weather. Often it changes abruptly. A small distance in the hills can bring a big change in the weather. Some days the higher elevations are cooler. Some days they are warmer. According to the National Weather Service the rain was pretty widespread throughout the hills yesterday and with more showers forecast for today they’ve put out a flood watch for the downstream areas that surround the hills. The reservoirs are pretty full and the hills are pretty good at channeling the runoff into the streams that have been prone to flash flooding since the hills arose long before people inhabited this area.
I know that I have been blogging about the weather quite a bit in the past couple of weeks. It isn’t that the weather is the biggest topic of my life these days. I’ve been struggling with how best to package and present the capital funds drive for our congregation. I have been working with worship leaders to experiment with changes in our service and have felt pressures pulling me in different directions as I try to enable people to feel the freedom to make changes, while respecting tradition and understanding that there are multiple points of view in a congregation like ours. This is newsletter week at the church and our newsletter has to go to print tomorrow evening with more than a few articles that haven’t been written because I am waiting on others for the information I need. There is a lot going on in my life.
In the midst of busy times, however, I have always found peace and meaning in just being outdoors in the world. Somehow the cycles of the seasons reminds me that there are cycles to other parts of my life as well. There are seasons in projects and perhaps even in some relationships. And a short paddle on the lake or a brief walk in the hills reminds me that I am not the center of the universe - my perspective is very limited .
The rain that is running down the drainpipe on the corner of my house is going through a very small part of its journey. The short trip down the pipe is a small distance compared to the drop from the clouds. And that fall is small compared to the travels the water vapor took suspended in the clouds. The water running down my drainpipe might have evaporated from the surface of the Pacific Ocean. It might have traveled with other water vapor that arose from the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest. Some of the water in the clouds probably fell as precipitation over the Cascades and Rockies before the rest moved on to our part of the world. After flowing down the drainpipe, some of the water will sink into the soil of my front lawn. Some of it will run off and flow down the street. A few drops will probably make their way to the Cheyenne River and from there to the Missouri, the Mississippi and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico.
Our lives are part of a much bigger stream.
That doesn’t mean that the everyday business of living a faithful life is inconsequential - in fact it is just the opposite. The decisions we make and the actions we take have effects that last long beyond the span of our time on this earth. Who knows for sure which stories of our times will become part of the larger stories fo our people? Who knows which of our actions will be remembered? Those judgments will be given to others. Our responsibility is to live with an awareness that our actions and decisions affect others. Like the rain running down the pipe, we are part of a much bigger picture.
It is possible to think of ourselves as being more important than we really are. It is also possible to think that we are less significant than we are. We are a part of a whole that is grand. The story of God and the people of God on this earth is a spectacular epic.
Some days I feel like making history. Some days I feel like listening to the rain. Both may be good investments of my time.