We think we know rain . . .
But listen! What is that?
Icy hammers striking a steel roof?
A sideways, rattlepane squall?
Rain pelts forest, suddenly backlit as if by flood lights. April’s quicksilver theater beckons. How swiftly the downpour escalates, sluicing through tangled birch and fir—a sky-funneled deluge within a shaft of light so charged, so electrifying, I can’t look away.
Twigs festooned with bearded lichens tremble, weighted with liquid gems: winking sapphire, emerald, fuchsia. Gold. Branches upholstered in moss seep. So many big bright tears.
And still the celestial light dazzles, half-blinding, and the heart lifts, awash, as if somehow suspended outside time and yet . . .
purely here . . .
even as sun-warmed water across our planet keeps rising as mist, falling as sleet, crystallizing as snowdrift. Pond ice. Permafrost.
Think of it! Every trace of water—primal and present since the beginning—lingers on: from the face of the deep to the rivers of Eden, from the tears of Christ to these glints of glory.
Transcendence. Is this what I long for?
A shiver runs down my spine. I feel weightless, suspended. Nudged toward change. Or an insight. Something hovers, something divine, surpassing life’s normal limitations. I am here, trying to take it all in. No need to earn this fleeting gift, no pressure to prove myself, no price to be paid. I needn’t be one iota wiser or kinder, less guilty or more organized. I am enough as is, enveloped for now in rain-lit grace.
Later perhaps, I’ll retain an impression, an after-image. An internalized sweep of reverence to be relived.
Any moment it might swim up
into my consciousness,
leave me buoyed afresh with marvel . . .
How do we recognize a transcendent moment . . . and our place within it?
Suspended raindrop: Photo by Ed Leszczynskl on Unsplash
Grass: Photo by Thomas Couillard on Unsplash
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