Prelude to the Storm, Sonoma Coast
Occasionally, when it is not too cold or a total down-pour, I enjoy walking in the rain. It’s a time when I feel my connectedness with the cosmos. The sound of a misty rain dropping its moisture on a canopy of leaves and needles and then on my own head is a symphony unto itself. Each water drop seems to have its own tonality scoring a melody to its own chant: Be bathed in the pleasantness of the essence of what makes for life.
A few days ago I sat with a group of 20 women. We were asked to share a word that might guide us into and through 2016. Most of the words were encompassing concepts like limitlessness, hopefulness, pain, growth, relationship-building, economic stability and adventure.
Perhaps because it was raining earlier in the day and I live in the Bay Area, and we in California have been in a drought for four years, the word that surfaced for me was “water.†In fact, since water is such a precious commodity everywhere on the earth, all the guiding words I heard from this group of wise women seemed to also describe the human need, use or abuse of water.
It is yet to be seen if the devastating pattern of years of drought is going to be broken by the promised El Nino. I try to conserve water in little ways. For instance, since my faucet and the water heater are far from one another, I use a teapot to heat the water for my morning face-washing. Many people are taking personal water conservation seriously, but, sadly, we know the great savings of individuals is a fraction of the water wasted by the fracking industry and other huge businesses/corporations. We need to make our voices heard.
Fly Amanita provide water for trees.
Water surrounding us and within us was the creative spirit pointing me to water images on my various morning saunters in the mists that, hopefully, are preludes to greater storms. Our earth has been likened to a huge terrarium. The water that still remains within it existed millions of years ago. So when that misty rain begins to drip down my face and it brings out the colors of the rocks on the beach beneath my feet, I feel like these very drops had once washed faces of our ancient mothers.
Mother of the Mountains, Mother of the Waters,
the people long to call out your names.
Mother of the Snowfall, Mother of the Thunders,
we seek you out in the trees and birds and the skies that hold them.
Mother of the Sunshine, Mother of the Flooding Deltas,
in song and dance, on rock and forest floor we return.
Mother of the earthen clays, Mother of the Cosmic Pathways,
the people’s hunger for you has never died;Â it runs down our faces as tears from above.
I pray and hope that there will be rain drops on this earth to run down the faces of distant future sisters and brothers.