A New Greenback

Nope, not about freshly printed U.S. dollars, but it got your attention!

A little over two weeks ago we began adding the request for rain to our daily prayers. Within hours, there was a torrential downpour, with a brilliant lightning display and booming thunder. This grand display of the awesome power of nature was certainly awe inspiring. I would have been even more amazed by the driving rain and reverberating thunder had I not been walking home during a lightning storm. Then again, as I walked, the water penetrated my layers of clothing, leaving me to feel as if I was a part of the earth, yearning for water to nourish me, although I’m not sure that I was necessarily yearning to be soaked.

Upon arriving home, I hung my clothes up to dry and then went to sleep. Before I left my apartment the next morning, I checked my clothes, only to find them to still be retaining water. I hung them outside on the drying line, then walked to the bus stop to catch the bus on my way downtown. On the way, I passed the brown dried grasses and weeds that are behind my house.

Some days later, I noticed that the brown earth was not exclusively brown. The supple shoots of new leaves and green grass were pushing through, as I wrote in a post earlier this year, it’s a new and different kind of green than I am accustomed to, having grown up in a place where rain is generally plentiful, and where the first green makes its appearance in late March or early April. Here’s to more rain, more growth, and more green!