Time moves as fast as a rain drop falls from a thunderstorm. I had never realized until today just how fast a drop of rain falls. It moves more like a bullet fired from a high caliber firearm. Billions of drops strike and splash the ground in random cadence. Natural syncopation. A mere drop of water is a "lifetime-uneventuality" moving in the rain drop, like a soul being born for purpose and yet unpredicted in the human sense. The drop of life is not time itself. Time is only duration. A life, on the other hand, is the the very construct of the rain drop itself, its size, its sheen, its purity, its heavyness or substance, or even, its "ontological essence." I know, "too many syllables." Yup. My self advice is to ditch Platonic and Augustinian philosophical constructs and write about what is, um, "real".
So today, at the Diocese of Las Cruces Pastoral Center, as I contemplated life through the Venetian blinds of the coffee room, out the pane of moistened glass, across the grassy knoll and the asphalt parking lot, clouds billowing, the sun setting, I watched a version of my life fall from the heavens and the duration from its departure from the clouds to its ultimate terminus, and it was hardly visible. I know. Long sentence. There will be more. I figure a sentence can last as long or as short as a summer thunder storm in the Chihuahuan Desert. Back to the raindrop. I mean, the raindrop of my life while straight as an arrow, and angular in movement, and unhesitatingly graceful, was-is quick, fast, rapid fire, like the blink of an eye. In the music of the rain, I wondered where just one drop might be found amid the pools of amorphous water on the black asphalt, puddling and rippling with oil sheen giving it unintentional irradescent luster.
This is how fast my life has been moving these days. New job. Busy job. Great job. Great deacon job. And so it seems my fall, like the rain drops, is even accelerating. More dreams to dream. More winds to overcome on the way down. But God is present even in my frustration and my limitations, as even in my speed, I seem to move in slow motion to do the things it would take a billion billion rain drops to do to fully bless the earth. I suppose blessing the earth in the perfect sense is not my job alone. And I do wonder that in the next blink of my eye, whether I will be watching myself look at myself as the raindrops see (if they had eyes) watching me as I look out a window at a nursing home a hundred miles away, wondering who will visit me. Maudlin? Yes. True? Yes. Likely? Don't know. But it is "the looking out of the window" at the rain drop that caused me to think of the plausibility; and what I must do to prepare for the possibility that I will wake up one day among people I barely know with a sense of anxiety and wonder and perhaps even some anticipation and hope that true freedom is something that is beyond corporal senscience. I think of those in nursing homes who are indeed free from the nightmare of loneliness in their real homes that they once lived in with no one there. They had been "left behind" in a sense. And in the almost imperceivable freedom of the nursing home, while to some it might be a kind of incarceration, those inside, move in their wheelchairs for the joy of the moment. It is the joy that they can think, pray, hope, breathe and live for their loved ones far off in the distance who cannot visit because of jobs, family responsibilities and committments, sicknesses, and in some cases the recalcitrance of estrangement. But they breathe anyway; they pray anyway, and they hope anyway. This is, however, perhaps my own interpretation of their inner sense since I would like my future freedom in captivity to be just that, a chance to be a monk of sorts, a prayer recluse, lifting the heavy weight of appealing to God and the saints in behalf of those I love and all the world for that matter, and that my ultimate transition from raindrop unto pool be purposeful and redemptive like the tears of a God loving creation even in the midst of its sin, its missing the mark "time and time again" like a thousand million rain drops that fail to hit the ground but rather evaporate in mid-flight for fear of being just water for the life of the dry ground, or even a pool that gives luster to a boring parking lot -- a moment of reflection of a sun peering through the clouds in the distance letting the person on the other side of the window pane see -- the sun also rises even as it falls in the west. Oh, there is redemptive power to a pool of water in an asphalt parking lot. It made me think.
I know that I have waxed somewhat poetically in a "stream of conscious" way in reflecting these sentiments following my experience of watching the raindrops. However, the experience gave cause to me thinking about how brief my life is, was, will be -- haha -- amazing, it has not ended yet, but in a way, that is not perceivable in the perfect (linguistic term) sense, it will never ever end. And the God that is very present to me within me, and outside me (not me) but Him, is in fact who is the catalyst of catalysts in bringing about an eternity beyond the pavement upon which all rain drops fall. I think God gives specific weight to raindrops so they achieve their most efficient purpose in creation; and I think God determines where each rain drop can fall but not necessarily will fall. Rain drops have a life of their own and even they, out of willfullness, wish to fly off their trajectory and do so only to evaporate into nothingness or to fall into the unseemly rivers of "todayness" and "what is transitory" and "what is not liberating" but rather fall into what is indeed true incarceration and ineffectiveness.
Is all this clear as mud? For those who read my blogs, and have commented how they liked them, I'm guessing there are a few "huhs?" out there. And yet, if all that I have written above is only as clear as mud, at least that is a level of clarity through which even the blind man can achieve some sense of purpose, direction, and that momentary extremely important "what is my now?" and "what do I do? and finally, "what is the context" of otherness (friendship with God) that surrounds me? Like the rain drop, I suppose the most important thing is to stay together in the fall, the "not breaking apart in mid air", if that makes any sense. God, by the way, is the well spring of every tear and every drop of rain. Everyone.
Perhaps Francis of Assisi might see Brother and Sister Raindrop along the way in the journey from up there to down here. (Down is not necessarily better than up by the way.) St. Francis would have seen and cheered his Brother and Sister Raindrops on, in one of his sermons on the run: "Brother Rain, blaze a quick and furious trail across the altitude so someday you can run the ground as Cousin River. Feel Brother Wind and ride him free, and do not fight him, and with a sense that each of you is meant to be the sanctifying Baptism of our lovely Sister Earth. And each of us was meant to be the rhythm of the tides to be moved by Sister Moon. And each a diamond in the sky to the smiling Brother Sun." Each drop falls from the cloud of life in a mysterious journey to the very humus of creation. That which compels the downward journey of great purpose has a name, and it is neither gravity, nor depravity, but rather, Nativity and even "Theoclivity". Jesus (not the Platonic or Sophiclean demigod myth, but rather the real and only ever hypostatic God-Man) leads, feeds, seeds, fills needs, weeds, and even bleeds. In doing so He firstly sanctifies, and lastly "grace-ifies"in sacra facium ipse ad mundi (my latin conjugations and declensions are all wrong). He is that first rain drop of blessing, and ultimately, He is that magnificent ocean of salt and light, reflection, flight, refreshment, freedom, movement, first cause, and graceful beatific vision beyond my comprehension-- into which all rain drops have been meant to flow. And so, my prayer? "Let me fall where I can flow to You O Lord, my only source and only destination. Amen."
So today, at the Diocese of Las Cruces Pastoral Center, as I contemplated life through the Venetian blinds of the coffee room, out the pane of moistened glass, across the grassy knoll and the asphalt parking lot, clouds billowing, the sun setting, I watched a version of my life fall from the heavens and the duration from its departure from the clouds to its ultimate terminus, and it was hardly visible. I know. Long sentence. There will be more. I figure a sentence can last as long or as short as a summer thunder storm in the Chihuahuan Desert. Back to the raindrop. I mean, the raindrop of my life while straight as an arrow, and angular in movement, and unhesitatingly graceful, was-is quick, fast, rapid fire, like the blink of an eye. In the music of the rain, I wondered where just one drop might be found amid the pools of amorphous water on the black asphalt, puddling and rippling with oil sheen giving it unintentional irradescent luster.
This is how fast my life has been moving these days. New job. Busy job. Great job. Great deacon job. And so it seems my fall, like the rain drops, is even accelerating. More dreams to dream. More winds to overcome on the way down. But God is present even in my frustration and my limitations, as even in my speed, I seem to move in slow motion to do the things it would take a billion billion rain drops to do to fully bless the earth. I suppose blessing the earth in the perfect sense is not my job alone. And I do wonder that in the next blink of my eye, whether I will be watching myself look at myself as the raindrops see (if they had eyes) watching me as I look out a window at a nursing home a hundred miles away, wondering who will visit me. Maudlin? Yes. True? Yes. Likely? Don't know. But it is "the looking out of the window" at the rain drop that caused me to think of the plausibility; and what I must do to prepare for the possibility that I will wake up one day among people I barely know with a sense of anxiety and wonder and perhaps even some anticipation and hope that true freedom is something that is beyond corporal senscience. I think of those in nursing homes who are indeed free from the nightmare of loneliness in their real homes that they once lived in with no one there. They had been "left behind" in a sense. And in the almost imperceivable freedom of the nursing home, while to some it might be a kind of incarceration, those inside, move in their wheelchairs for the joy of the moment. It is the joy that they can think, pray, hope, breathe and live for their loved ones far off in the distance who cannot visit because of jobs, family responsibilities and committments, sicknesses, and in some cases the recalcitrance of estrangement. But they breathe anyway; they pray anyway, and they hope anyway. This is, however, perhaps my own interpretation of their inner sense since I would like my future freedom in captivity to be just that, a chance to be a monk of sorts, a prayer recluse, lifting the heavy weight of appealing to God and the saints in behalf of those I love and all the world for that matter, and that my ultimate transition from raindrop unto pool be purposeful and redemptive like the tears of a God loving creation even in the midst of its sin, its missing the mark "time and time again" like a thousand million rain drops that fail to hit the ground but rather evaporate in mid-flight for fear of being just water for the life of the dry ground, or even a pool that gives luster to a boring parking lot -- a moment of reflection of a sun peering through the clouds in the distance letting the person on the other side of the window pane see -- the sun also rises even as it falls in the west. Oh, there is redemptive power to a pool of water in an asphalt parking lot. It made me think.
I know that I have waxed somewhat poetically in a "stream of conscious" way in reflecting these sentiments following my experience of watching the raindrops. However, the experience gave cause to me thinking about how brief my life is, was, will be -- haha -- amazing, it has not ended yet, but in a way, that is not perceivable in the perfect (linguistic term) sense, it will never ever end. And the God that is very present to me within me, and outside me (not me) but Him, is in fact who is the catalyst of catalysts in bringing about an eternity beyond the pavement upon which all rain drops fall. I think God gives specific weight to raindrops so they achieve their most efficient purpose in creation; and I think God determines where each rain drop can fall but not necessarily will fall. Rain drops have a life of their own and even they, out of willfullness, wish to fly off their trajectory and do so only to evaporate into nothingness or to fall into the unseemly rivers of "todayness" and "what is transitory" and "what is not liberating" but rather fall into what is indeed true incarceration and ineffectiveness.
Is all this clear as mud? For those who read my blogs, and have commented how they liked them, I'm guessing there are a few "huhs?" out there. And yet, if all that I have written above is only as clear as mud, at least that is a level of clarity through which even the blind man can achieve some sense of purpose, direction, and that momentary extremely important "what is my now?" and "what do I do? and finally, "what is the context" of otherness (friendship with God) that surrounds me? Like the rain drop, I suppose the most important thing is to stay together in the fall, the "not breaking apart in mid air", if that makes any sense. God, by the way, is the well spring of every tear and every drop of rain. Everyone.
Perhaps Francis of Assisi might see Brother and Sister Raindrop along the way in the journey from up there to down here. (Down is not necessarily better than up by the way.) St. Francis would have seen and cheered his Brother and Sister Raindrops on, in one of his sermons on the run: "Brother Rain, blaze a quick and furious trail across the altitude so someday you can run the ground as Cousin River. Feel Brother Wind and ride him free, and do not fight him, and with a sense that each of you is meant to be the sanctifying Baptism of our lovely Sister Earth. And each of us was meant to be the rhythm of the tides to be moved by Sister Moon. And each a diamond in the sky to the smiling Brother Sun." Each drop falls from the cloud of life in a mysterious journey to the very humus of creation. That which compels the downward journey of great purpose has a name, and it is neither gravity, nor depravity, but rather, Nativity and even "Theoclivity". Jesus (not the Platonic or Sophiclean demigod myth, but rather the real and only ever hypostatic God-Man) leads, feeds, seeds, fills needs, weeds, and even bleeds. In doing so He firstly sanctifies, and lastly "grace-ifies"in sacra facium ipse ad mundi (my latin conjugations and declensions are all wrong). He is that first rain drop of blessing, and ultimately, He is that magnificent ocean of salt and light, reflection, flight, refreshment, freedom, movement, first cause, and graceful beatific vision beyond my comprehension-- into which all rain drops have been meant to flow. And so, my prayer? "Let me fall where I can flow to You O Lord, my only source and only destination. Amen."
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