Spiritual Sunday: Rain

We've been having a drought where I live.  Days and days without rain in an area that normally has rain almost every afternoon this time of year.  It makes people grumpy.  While they say that they are enjoying all the time that they have to get out and go play in all the sunshine and that they don't miss the rain, they really aren't having any fun and they are getting grouchier with each passing day or no rain.  Our cars are dusty.  Our yards are dry and brown. We have to water our gardens to get the little produce we can.  The berries aren't as sweet.  The air even feels dry, which is odd for living along the Gulf Coast as we do. 

Then on Wednesday night it started to rain.  We had a really nice storm come through and it rained throughout the night and into Thursday.  It even was raining Thursday night and I didn't have to play my white noise machine (which is programmed to play rain with thunder) to go to sleep.  I had the real thing playing outside my house.  And while the air felt wet and heavy and it became steamy on Friday when the temperatures started rising again, it felt fresh and new outside.  Things seemed cleaner.  Even the houses seemed fresh from the new rain.  It was simply lovely.

It's odd how weather affects our mood.  And it is different for each of us.  I love rain (and snow for that matter, but we don't get snow here in the south often - which is a good thing).  On rainy days I feel fresh and clean.  The rain is soothing and the thunder's rumbling is peaceful.  I've never been afraid of thunder.  My grandmother told me that I was born during an extremely violent thunderstorm and that when I was a baby they could always count on me taking a nap when a storm would roll in.  I like that story.  I don't know if it is true or not, but I like to think it is.  None of my children are afraid of thunder either and rarely will they even wake at night from a storm.  If they do, they simply sigh and snuggle deeper into their blankets and are lulled back to sleep. 

Rain, for me, means a good day or reading.  It is curling up in bed or on the couch with a new book or an old familiar and letting the rain play the soundtrack for the book I'm reading.  Since beginning work at Barnes and Noble (a bookstore for those who don't know) I have found that rain also makes other people become readers.  When it is raining outside people tend to stay longer in the bookstore.  On Thursday I found all the over-stuffed chairs filled, the cafe full and people curled up on the floor throughout the store with books propped, enjoying the forced captivity and the time to enjoy a book. 

Rain has played a role in many different religions.  In the Judeo-Christian story of Noah's Ark, God cleansed the earth with rain.  He washed the impurities away.  The ancient Aztec had a rain god called Tlolak.  He wasn't a very nice god, but he was revered because the sacrifices to him were thought to bring about the rains needed for a plentiful harvest.  Zeus is the god of thunder (and with that comes rain) as are the Roman Jupiter and the Norse Thor.  The Inca has a god of rainstorms called Pariacaca (which when you say it almost sounds like rain pitter-pattering on the window).  The Egyptians had Tefnut who was the goddess of rain.  Many cultures had devotions or rituals they performed to their gods and goddesses to plea for rain (and in some cases to stop the rain).  Rain has even played a role in our religious structures.  Masons knew that water running across mortar would weaken it and cause structural damage, so gargoyles were built to divert the water and thus save their work.  (It should be noted that gargoyles date back to pre-Christian cultures and are found throughout the world including Greece, South America and Japan.)

Rain is important.  We need rain to fill our rivers and reservoirs.  We need it to grow crops, to clean, to cool, and, especially, to quench our thirst.  Rain may inconvenience at times.  Weddings have had to be rescheduled or moved because of rain.  Ball games have been called due to rain.  Rain has caused floods and when paired with the winds of a hurricane has been known to devastate cities.  Rain isn't predictable.  We can't forecast very far into the future when we will have rain or when it might stop.  Our powers of prediction are truly limited to just a few days at best.  Yet as infuriating as it is and as fickle as it seems, we still should be glad when we do see it as living without it would be a terrible world that would be dry and parched. And I don't want to live in that kind of world.

Fathers and families and fairies

In case you missed all the signs in the stores, the sappy (or funny) television commercials, the reminders on the radio or Google's doodle of the day, today is Fathers' Day.  There is controversy over who is to get credit for the first Fathers' Day, but we can pretty well agree that it came after the first Mothers' Day.  Woodrow Wilson was the first President of the United States to actually declare it a holiday.  Fathers around the country were honored for one day for all that they do all year long.  Children knelt at the knees of their fathers and basked in his wonderfulness.  And then the retail industry got involved. 

Personally I loathe these Hallmark holidays.  It's like someone had the bright idea that we would give dad a special day wherein we buy him lots of (sometimes useless and often times cheap) things like ties, aftershave, soap-on-a-rope, and rotary saws which will go unused, become dusty or slice a finger off.  (By the way all those things happened to my dad and his gifts when I was a child.)  Fathers don't have to cook, do the lawn, or wash the car on this one Sunday of the year.  They can sit in front of the television and hope there is at least a baseball game on.  Who thought that the middle of summer was a good time for Fathers' Day?  Hockey and basketball are over, Football won't begin any time soon and baseball is just getting started.  There isn't much exciting going on sports-wise.  (No, do not mention golf.  That is the. Worst. Sport to watch on television, much less in person.)  Where I live it is already too hot to go outside and do anything really fun (our heat index today is supposed to be over 105°F).  Which boils down to aside from a card and some "OMG I need to buy dad something" gifts, today is pretty much like any other day.  Except it is Fathers' Day.  Like that is supposed to mean something.

In the Judeo-Christian scriptures it says to "Honor thy mother and father."  It doesn't say to "Honor thy mother and father on one appointed day of the year."  Nope.  It just says honor.  Perhaps if we honored our parents more throughout the year we wouldn't have this need that we need to do something special one day out of the year to make them feel like we care about them.  We wouldn't have to single them out for the work that they are doing all year. 

Now granted many of us have dysfunctional families.  Some of us have not just dysfunctional families but ones that are so broken and hurt that they resemble a jigsaw puzzle where the dog has chewed on a few of the pieces so they will never fit together correctly again. My own family (that being my parents and siblings) are more like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces missing (I'm afraid the dog might spit them out later, but that has yet to be verified.  My baby brother could be hiding them in his pocket so he can be the one to put the last pieces on the board and thus "win" at the family puzzle.)  My created family (that being my spouse and three children (and four cats and one hamster and a tiny elephant named Tippy)) are more like a new box of puzzle pieces.  All the pieces are there and we even have the border built now and most of the fun parts are done, we are just working our way through all the sky.  There are a few pieces that fell on the floor and the cat batted around so they are dusty and one one has a little crease on the corner, but they all fit.  I like how we have worked together.  We are comfortable with each other and like being together. 

One of the things that we have done has been to basically ignore Hallmark holidays.  We don't really celebrate Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day and Valentine's Day.  Why?  Aren't we supposed to honor and love each other all year?  Does it really prove we love someone when we buy them flowers or boxes of chocolates or soaps-on-a-rope just because some industry said we should?  We joke in our family that we have a Valentine Fairy.  She comes on February 15th bearing clearance chocolates.  (She's almost as closely loved as the Easter Fairy who comes bearing clearance candies and 25¢ egg dying kits which is then used to dye fabric and yarn.)  We generally greet each other on those "special days" and give each other a kiss.  However, that is how we begin most of our days.  "Good morning.  I love you." Smooch. Smooch.

And that is how I think it should be.  Honor each other every day.  Honor your mother.  Honor your father.  Honor your lover.  Honor your friends.  Honor your family.  Respect each other.  Be good to each other.  Love each other.  And then we don't need to feel that we should go out and purchase stuff.  Stuff. Stuff. Stuff.  I really don't like stuff.  I want relationships that work and people I love surrounding me.  Not just on the third Sunday in June, but every day.  Now go be good to each other.

Spiritual Sunday

Everything I know about religion I learned from Star Trek.  OK, not really.  But Star Trek was a huge influence in my spiritual beliefs.  I was raised as a cradle Episcopalian.  Have a mother who is an Episcopla priest.  I like to think that I put her through seminary.  We would have long theological discussions based on various papers she was writing or classes she was taking.  I had never really questioned my beliefs until I started truly paying attention to the themes of Star Trek and not just the plots.  The plots were essentially the same.  Kirk pokes the snake with a stick.  An intergalactic space being threatens to unleash cosmic power which will end all life as we know it.  Picard rushes in and saves the day and Reiker gets the girl.  But the themes were what started making me question what I really believed. 

Over the years I called my self a Star Trekian philosopher.  I believed that there could be all kinds of truths in the world and not just the one I had been raised to accept as truth.  It wasn't until one day when I friend of mine asked me what my spiritual beliefs were that I found out there already was a "Star Trek" religion.  It was called Unitarian Universalism.  Wow.  There were entire congregations of people all over the world who were living the Star Trek philosophy that I thought I had discovered.  (Silly me.)  It wasn't until after September 11, 2001 that I actually sought out a UU congregation.  I had lots of questions and mainstream religion wasn't helping.  I was told I was wrong for speaking out against the President of the United States and for daring to say that was was not the answer.  (Despite my Star Trek background, I am a pacifist.)  Fortunately, in the UU church I found others like myself who felt the same way, including members of the US military. 

As the blog progresses I will expand on how my beliefs meld in with my writing and knitting because I do see my beliefs on the pages and in the yarn that flow through my fingers.  I can't imagine how one can't be influenced by their spirituality.