RAIN!!!

 It began last night. It is continuing this morning. It is rain, real honest to goodness rain. Not a smattering of rain, not a mist. Not just enough to make the roadways dangerously slick or to make one wonder if it is just a really heavy fog. Real rain. Puddles on the ground, piles of dark clouds in the sky, need to find the long unused jacket in the closet type rain!

My prayer this morning (maybe this is a bit obvious!) was about the rain. About gratitude to God for its coming, about all the stressed trees and plants around the area that will drink this up gladly. About trees that didn't make it through the last four years and empty reservoirs and sinking aquifers diminishing our capacity to hold groundwater. About concerns for mudslides and endangered property if this is the beginning of the "monsoon" season El Niño COULD bring us --- or even if it is not (for these are perennial problems in California even without a drought).  About clients driving here today and my concern for their safety and the safety of all on the roads today. It has been so dry for so long rain is both a blessing and a potential curse.

But mainly my prayer was of gratitude and hope. Gratitude to God for this gift and the gift of all life. Hope that folks pause to appreciate this day and our world; hope that we have learned (or do learn!) to husband its resources better. Hope for new life in all of its forms. (And on All Souls day that was especially poignant.) Hope that complacency in the face of the wonder of rain would not quickly replace the joy of and delight in its coming. Hope that, as in the reading a week ago or so, we learn to really attend to the weather but also to attend to all the ways God comes to us at any moment. Hope.