Learning to love the rain~

Thank you Mark Nepo~ The deeper the cut, the redder the blood.  The deeper the experience, the richer  the wisdom. It has always taken  more time to reach the deep than  the surface. And so it is with  each other. It takes time to listen  our way beyond the cuts into the  depth of each other’s experience  where the richness of living waits.  This piece explores this mysterious  physic of the soul.     WITH THINGS THAT BREAK  What matters bears entering more  than once. This entering-more-than- once is a form of listening. It’s how  leaves in fall offer a deeper color on  rainy days. In that grayness, we look  again and the undertones have a  chance. I have a friend who moved  to Victoria; that lush isle off the coast  of Vancouver where winters seem  long and dreary. In her third winter,  someone born there pulled her aside  and said, “You have to learn to love  the rain. You have to spend more time  wet. Then you’ll have different names  for lazy squall and slanting mist. Then  the rain, as much as the sun, will  cause something in you to grow.”  It’s the same with things that break  our heart. Like learning to love the  stories of elders who repeat themselves.  You have to learn to love the slant of  their rain. To take the time to sense  what they can’t leave behind. With  things that are new, we keep moving.  With things that break, we circle back:  repeating and renaming till we can find  each other in the rain.  A Question to Walk With: Tell the story  of someone you know and how they  have endured being broken. What  have you learned from their journey?