Rainy days:)

Awesome Halloween costumes!

     When I was a pre-schooler ( I don't think we had that term back then), I used to hate rainy days.  To get me over my crankiness, my grandmother would have me recite the little rhyme:
     Rain, rain go away
     Come again another day....

My grandmother

     Being gullible, I can remember repeating  that poem  fervently and then getting on the couch, kneeling on the seat cushions  with my arms folded over the back of the sofa, watching through the window  to see if the sky would obey me or not.
    Most of the time, the answer was "not".
    Only now, 50 years later, does it occur to me that the little poem doesn't even make much sense. If I hated rainy days with a passion, which  I did, then banishing the rain to another day just meant that sooner or later I would have a rotten, rainy day.

    Ironically, over the years, walking in a light rain at evening time has come to be one of my favorite things to do.  I could do it every day in fall, spring, and summer and I don't think I would grow tired of it.  (Well, if I were in the Rain Forest, I would but...) And when there is a huge downpour where the water just floods off our porch overhang and creates a white curtain that sort of shuts the rest of the world out, I have to stop and watch it, always amazed at the power of the deluge   as well as the sheer beauty of it.
    Right now, I wish it were that easy to wash away the impurities of my heart.  To wash away the stress and strains of family life.   To wash away the nastiness of national politics.  And finally, to wash away the black ink, literally off the newspaper that delineates another terrorist attack.

    Another memory I have  from when I was small: sitting in a tiny country church (the singing could best be described as caterwauling, truly), while adults fanned themselves with Funeral HOme paper fans and we kids played until someone, usually me, got a bit carried away and then, literally got carried away... (My grandmother had the ugliest black shoes in the world and they sounded like artillery going off when she stomped across the church floor to jerk me up by the nape of my neck... Some memories never fade!)

My grandfather and my grandmother

    But somewhere among the playing and the paddlings, I still remember these lyrics:
    Showers of blessings, showers of blessings we need... Mercy drops round us are falling but for the showers we plead...
    Maybe an old hymn.. but I think we need it now as much or more than we did when I first became acquainted with it.

My Great Uncle Nathan getting ready to baptize someone.