Drought

July hasn’t only brought heat. It was like a timer switch was hooked to the clouds. Droughts are nothing new. They’re a result of so many random bits and pieces of atmospheric minutia that even experts who study the complicated engine can’t predict what’s next. It’s the butterfly moving its wings in China affecting the path of a tornado in Kansas phenomenon. Who knows what causes drought?
Two of my friends have four kids close in age. Camping was their way to get out of the house without taking out a mortgage. Every time they put up the tent, wherever, whenever, it rained. Camping in the rain became normal for them. One day I came over to their house during a drought. It hadn’t rained in three weeks. The tent was set up in the back yard. “The kids camping out tonight?” “No, I figured it’s the best way to break the drought.” We laughed. I had to turn on the wipers for the drive home.
Who knows? Someone once told me that a coincidence is God’s way of being subtle. I have a hard time with some sort of deterministic dude running the show. But I like the subtlety thing. So much of what happens is a result of so many other things. Nothing specifically determines the outcome, but each and every is significant. And we have absolutely no idea how one works with the others to create a result far beyond our expectations. We just aren’t that aware.
But we can be more aware. There are so many ways we do have direct power. A word, a touch, subtle, yet so powerful. We discount our own authority, our own capability. We live at such an intersection of potential and actual, of spiritual and material. Both have incredible power. Both move and change and offer us moments of synergy, of energy output that transcends the energy inputs. To be part of those moments, to reach out and allow creative potential to move through us takes either an incredibly fortunate accident or wisdom that allows us to see into the chaos and patterns of our existence. Fortune is luck. And unless we want to rely on such a fickle acquaintance, we must spend some time and energy paying attention to the currents and tides that ebb and flow all around us and perhaps to others who already have.
Most are more than willing to duck. It’s easier to exist than it is to live. Habits are simple. We get efficient at accomplishing them. But there’s this lovely feeling when the drops begin plopping down so big they splash. The smell of the breeze as it carries the promise of coming rain. And we know that somewhere, somehow something has harmonized with something else and moved reality. Times like these make it worth wondering and reading and dreaming and listening to people and to tree frogs. For at such times we understand, with senses that so transcend formula as to make them silly. We understand that we are part of it all, connected, organically tangled with all of the world and even beyond.
There can be no denying all of this. Well, denial is possible but what does it accomplish except to make a fool of the denier. We are tangled together. What we do effects everything, including each other. So, if we would not be fools, it’s time to start paying attention to the score. We’ve got some dancing to do.
Time to go find my tent. Or maybe it’s specifically their tent. I think they sold it. I wonder if the new owners can make it work. Maybe it’s the tent in conjunction with the laughter of our kids. Looks like we’ve got some studying to do. After all, life is for learning.