How good was it to hear and see the rain on Friday. Good, heavy, soaking rain. When it rains like that you can almost sense the relief in plants as they feverishly begin to siphon up the moisture. Their leaves start to lose their limpness immediately and a brighter green returns. How the earth loves rain. And then the road starts to flood. Flash- flooding, swirling and swishing around the tyres of parked cars. Pushing and dragging weeks of fallen debris along the gutters. Bubbling up out of stormwater drains blocked with autumn leaf matter. Large puddles forming in the road, and passing cars sending cascades of water into the air. How rapidly the landscape transforms and starts to shine. All surfaces start to reflect light. A dazzling display of sparkle, glitter and twinkle.
I love blue sky days. I love the heat of the sun. But I just as equally love watching rainfall steadily. Watching it beat against the window. Watching it splash off the rocks. Watching it bounce off the lid of the rubbish bin and the roof of the car. Watching it drip from the leaves of shrubs. Watching it nourish the land selflessly and generously.
Rain. As I sat watching it fall steadily, I remembered so many songs that have rain in their title: Purple Rain, A hard rain is gonna fall, Singing in the rain, Raining in my heart, Have you ever seen the rain, Raindrops keep falling on my head, Here comes the rain again, Fire and rain, I wish it would rain down, Laughter in the rain, Raining on the Rock etc. So many songs. So many perspectives. So many images and expressions of this glorious thing called rain.
I paint quite a few pictures with rain in them. A recent one is included in this bulletin. I like the different moods that rain can create. Joyful. Thoughtful. Quiet. There’s something about rain that stirs and feeds the imagination. Maybe it’s because the human body is roughly 60% water, our brains are 75% and our lungs 85%. Perhaps our affinity with water makes us more receptive to its wonder and its threats, its ebbs and its flows.
So, as winter starts to kick in, and if we get some more really wet days, find some time to watch the rainfall. Let it stir your imagination. Maybe put on a rain song. That reminds me, Guns n Roses – November Rain. Love that track. Has one of the best and longest instrumental openings to a rock ballad.
Shalom
David
