Rain
A single drop of rain. Five drops. Fifteen. Fifty. A flash of lightning. A rumble of thunder.
From nothing to something, one to many, peacefulness to high drama in a matter of seconds. We’ve all experienced the collective impact of many small drops falling together. A rainfall is the perfect illustration of the strength to be found in numbers. Alone, what can one raindrop do? In their hundreds, thousands, millions they have the power to wash away the puny constructs of humanity.
So, too, one voice joined by another and another. Whether the voice is raised in song or in protest, there is strength and support and synergy in speaking, acting, singing together. I sang for some years in an a cappella choir much like Perpetuum Jazzile. The choir numbered anywhere from seventy to one hundred voices. Let me tell you: when we were all in tune, locking and ringing chords, producing overtones like angels’ voices, connected to the music and to one another, it would make me quake with joy. With the passion of that act of collective creation. I would literally feel a vibration in my head that said we were ‘there’; in that moment we were one. Does a raindrop feel that passion and unity when it joins its brethren in the journey from the skies?
And these people can sing! So many beautiful voices riding the wave of sound, supporting and sustaining each other. They remind me that we kid ourselves when we think we need complete autonomy to be happy. Freedom to do or be whatever we want. True, we need freedom to seek our destiny, follow our star, but oddly, the journey is enriched, and in fact, made possible only through connection with and dependence upon other human beings.
I like this metaphor of raindrops as people. I’m a seeker; I have an ongoing thirst to learn about myself, to learn about my place and purpose in the world. I am but a drop of water. I fall down to earth, and rise up to the heights in regular cycles. Each cycle brings with it added knowledge of myself, of others, of the unfolding of the universe.
I recently devoured Martha Beck’s two books on this subject: Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live, and Steering by Starlight: Finding Your Right Life, No Matter What! On her website Beck hopes that we will “find in them a reminder of something useful that’s already in your heart.” In the books she posits, with humour and humility, that we already know what our destiny, our right path, is. We have only to learn to listen to our bodies, our emotions, and our intuitions to interpret the surprisingly clear signals they give us, signals that are often all but drowned out by the clamouring of our fear: our fear of want and our fear of being endangered (physically or emotionally). And when we can learn to listen to and honour those sensations we will be following our true path, our bliss, as Joseph Campbell so aptly named it.
“I bless the rains down in Africa.” “I know that I must do what’s right/Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.” I like that in the lyrics of Africa, David Paich and Jeff Porcaro link elemental forces with the achievement of one’s destiny and one’s wholeness. “The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation.” The storyteller sees salvation reflected in the wings of the plane that is bringing his beloved, his destiny, to him. And, once together, there is no force on earth strong enough to separate him from her, from their entwined path. The rains, the stars, the mountains and deserts are unchanging aspects of our outer and our inner landscape that all guide us toward salvation, wholeness and achievement of what it is we’ve been sent here to do.
Then, of course, we have to take the lessons taught to us by these simple and unchanging realities, and make music with them. We find out who we are, and we join forces with others who are journeying on the path. We raise our voices together. We create overtones and resonances that ripple out through the world, like the first raindrop on a pond creates an ever-growing circle of influence, and is joined by another, and then another. Plop. Plop plop. Plop plop plop plop plop…
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Could I use your rain cloud photo for a blog I wrote tonight? I will give credit to you.