Spring Rain

The prayer I want to have always pouring through my heart:

Let us acknowledge the Lord.
Let us press on to acknowledge Him.
As surely as the sun rises, He will appear;
He will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.
(Hosea 6:3)

I feel the spring coming, at long last. After the snow, the rain fell and washed away the illusion. Spring rain or winter rain? Who cares, so long as the rain waters the earth! The rain waters me, too, though I don't absorb it with the grace of the trees. I can't drink the rain, and it doesn't nourish my body. But I am umbrella-less this year--I am soaking in the rain. It seeps into my skin, and I feel as drenched as the earth. Footsteps on my skin would squish.

I want to be that soaked in God's presence.

Come, like the sun and like the rain, like warmth and water, like light and cloud. Rain and sun together make the world so bright, polished and gleaming and reflecting. Every puddle mirrors the sky, every tree is lacquered. Raindrops like rhinestones refract the light from every leaf and stem. Even the buildings are rejuvenated, washed clean.

In the rain, I am cold and sorrowful, clenched into myself (though really I am leaking into the world and the world is seeping into me, with each sliding droplet). But the sun appears and its rays split me wide open and I spill out into the sky.

Come, sun and rain, and make me into a rainbow.

Snow Spell

Snow is falling again, veiling the trees. The snow is a gauze curtain between me and the world. Stay right where you are, the curtain tells me. Don't push me aside, or brush through me. Stay in this little piece of the world. This piece is enough for you. Why seek more?

I look out the window and the falling flakes dance before me. Already they are patterning the sodden black ground. Soon they will have whitened all the cars and roofs. The snow sticks to the trees like icing. It piles up in round mounds, softening every sharp corner, layering over the realities that lie on the ground. Suddenly the whole world will be clean and beautiful.

But not yet. Right now, the snow is still dancing its ritual of enchantment. The spell of transformation is still being cast, and the snow wants me out of its way, inside. But I am going out. I will push aside the curtain, I will brush through the layers of gauze. I will be present in the cold, sharp, real life that I belong to.

Alone

Across the miles of snow, your pain stretches out to me. You are floating in the night sky with the drifting snow, and you send out a tendril through the cold. It touches me. I wake from my slumber, look around, seek your face. But I cannot see you. Here with me is a fragment of who you are, this fragile tender shoot that has grown to transcend the distance, yet again. For we keep moving, keep uprooting ourselves. You especially, you have been replanted so many times I can't count the number of soils you have twined roots into. And how many little pieces of yourself have ripped away each time your growing plant has been transplanted?

Yet the vines connecting us never wither. Across a continent, across an ocean, we are the same. Born together, we are bound together. Now you have replanted yourself again, closer by but still hours away. Our roots don't tangle together these days; we grow in different soils and when the rain is watering me, snow is freezing you. I worry about frostbite for you, and I wish the Sun would thaw the hard ground where you are trying so desperately to grow, and encountering only ice. I don't sing to the Sun for myself anymore, to shine down on me--I sing for you, and send His rays away from myself because they need to hit you instead. I need a mirror, to reflect that warmth across the rivers and farms.

Can I be the moon, at least, to turn the light toward you? to cast pale moonbeams into the dark sky where you hang? The whirling snow will glow where the moonlight illuminates it: a hundred white dancers, stark against the black sky. You are stationary amid all the spinning, green amid all the black and white. In the wind, your leaves flutter gently, and your roots sway, naked in the winter air. Nothing holds you down, but nothing holds you up, either. Where is the Gardener, to plant you in a pot? to wrap your exposed roots in soil to protect them? to fertilizer and water you, to put you in the sun or shade, wherever you would grow best?

I am only a plant myself. I can't give you a pot, or shine on you like the Sun, or rain on you. My leaves don't reflect the light enough to even be the moon. But I will never untangle our twining vines. If a few drops of water flow down my stems to roll down to your roots, that is enough to make me glad.