September 2012

Wind and Rain

Dear Friends,

As the Earth is a conscious sentient being, so all her parts and systems are spirit full and responsive to conscious engagement.

Rainfall comes at the right times in the proper amounts.

I remember the morning I was camping on a friend's lawn.
I awoke in my tent and made my plans for the morning.
I would make some coffee and then sit by the lake for a meditation.
Then, depending on whether my friend was up and about,
I would either have a breakfast visit or pack up my tent to travel on, first.

As soon as I crawled out of my tent, however, I had a very strong compulsion and there is no other way to describe the thought that filled my mind to the exclusion of all else, to take down my tent and pack it into the car before I did anything else.
So I simply do exactly that.
The instant I close the lid to the trunk of my car, as if on cue, the first rain drops fall.
By the time I get under the roof of the house that is mere steps away, it is pouring rain.
As I drove on my way, in the stll pouring rain, later that morning, I was grateful that my gear was safe and dry.

The weather spirits are good to me.

My work of these past two summers has been all outside.
"Chance of showers" is not an excuse for a day off. In fact, gentle rain and periodic showers are condusive to gardening. They soften the ground making weeding and transplanting easier.

There have been too many times for it to be arbitrary or incidental, that there is light drizzle happening while I am working, but the moment that I get into my car to sit for a lunch break or travel to the next job site, the rain starts coming down hard. When it is time for me to get out to work, it eases up or stops completely.

There have been many times that I have been aware of rain in one place while it stays dry not too far away. Once I crossed a line on the highway, from dry to wet and then several kilometers down the road, from wet back to dry. The rain was travelling along a narrow corridor.

What determines where the rain will fall and when?

I don't profess to know the thinking processes of the rain spirits. However, if I am aware that there is "chance of showers", I put in my two cents worth and ask for the rain to include my garden in its travels. When it does so, I express my appreciation to it and bless the rain.

The other day I was walking through the forest, enjoying the plants that were looking good, and vaguly wondering how they were adapting to the unusually hot summer with sporadic rain. What came into my brain was the sense that they do not perceive time as the linear calendar hours and days that we humans do. So what may be a long time for us, say two weeks without rain, is more simply a period of diminished activity between rain, more like a nap or hibernation rather than some stress or discomfort or long waiting.

It's an interesting contemplation, this relationship of the natural/wild world with human thoughts and expectations. Certainly, the wild world has a mind of its own. Yet it is also equally certainly responsive to human engagement.

There was a story in the newsletter put out by the Shamanic Institute a number of years ago. It told of a forest fire in the USA that was driven by the prevailing winds towards a stash of military "supplies" such as explosives that would react dangerously to fire.

However it came about that the shamanic community became aware of this, I do not remember but the gist of the story is that a number of shamans talked to the wind spirits over a period of weeks until they persuaded the wind to stop blowing the fire in the natural direction it wanted to travel, towards the arsenal. In fact, they talked the wind into doing a complete reversal of direction and blowing the fire back across the burned out area, effectively putting it out.

Considering my basic understanding, that what we give energy to we strengthen, I am thinking that when extreme weather conditions are occurring, instead of bemoaning them and encouraging them, it would seem that imagining the preferred situation would encourage weather to moderate and behave differently.

We can exercise our free will to line up our thoughts with the outcomes we want to experience.

Blessings,

Rita