a meditation: just a moment

[johncomic]

I sit and watch the rain.

We went over a month without rain, all the lawns were the colour of straw, and I'd been praying for it. A couple days ago we finally got a solid downpour, and today it's raining again, off and on. The grass is showing signs of resurrection. I sit and watch and feel thankful.

Ivy grows up the southeast corner of our house; a few strands stretch out onto the electrical line. The ivy wasn't worried about the drought -- it just did what it does [grow], and let the rest take care of itself. The rain comes in its time. Worry doesn't hasten the rain or delay it. Ivy lives in the moment.

The ivy is beautiful. My eye follows its sweeps and curls and flaring leaves, then sees the tree further behind. The tree is beautiful, too. Even the few dying branches on it, whose leaves remain resolutely brown despite the water, have their own nobility and pride. All the trees are beautiful: each one unique, standing straight or swaying gently under the urgings of the raindrops, trunks and branches twisting in the winds of time.

All at once I realize that I love this nature around me, this planet I was made to be a part of. Even the irregular rocks at the edge of a neighbour's garden, the chattering puddles -- all of it precious and splendid. I feel how all of it connects, each part unique in itself, yet also an aspect of all the others. All one with the long sigh of the rain, with the distant thunder, and with me, breathing and seeing and feeling it all surrounding and permeating me.

Even the "unnatural", man-made parts have their own beauty and their own place. Each house, each brick unique, standing silently like a stone or a tree. Cracks in the sidewalk meander like ivy. Behind me, cars swish along the wet pavement and the sound suffuses itself into the breathing of the rain. White water churns out of the bottom of a drainpipe, and even the force of gravity, which guides the water into that activity, is a necessary and marvelous part of the totality in and around me.

Time seems absent. This is the moment, the Now, which the plants live in. It feels like the rain is not so much "falling" as it "has fallingness in it". Rather than taking one breath followed by another, I quietly "have breathing" in me. I hear bird songs which have always been there, but which I failed to notice until now. The number and variety of their sounds surprises me; their depth is magnificent, as some songs are close by, some far away in distant trees, as if all of space is filled with floating music.


There is "nothing special" about this moment; nothing "happened". But I feel peaceful and gently moved by it... all because of how my awareness chose to take in this world that is always there. And I realize that there could be many more moments like this, if I would decide to Be Aware.

Of course, I also realize that this would make it more difficult to Get Things Done® ...