Rain and more rain

It’s nice today, but It’s been raining here in the East for the last several days. Short showers here and there and then downpours and a deluge for a time as weather systems move through the northeast. The ground is saturated and flooding has occurred.

Some friends have complained about the wet and damp, but I love it. Watching it rain from the comfort of a dry place encourages an exchange between spirit and mind that is missing when the outdoors beckons with the freedom of sunlit choice.

For me rain has always awakened the Muse. This one called Window Rain comes from my book, Quiet Musings.

Racing, chasing down the pane,

Drops that started out as rain,

Some are fast and others slow,

Nervous sliding to below.

Stopping, starting, this way that,

Changing by another’s splat,

Lenses into nature’s gray

Help define the type of day.

Streaking, leaking, lines of wet,

Never staying never set,

Trace their path before it’s dry

To see a water butterfly.

No singing song of “go away,”

I truly want the rain to stay.

I miss it when it is not here,

To make my glass a chandelier.

Friendship

Our long time friends, really long, some forty plus years came to visit yesterday.

We hadn’t seen them in a year or so. They came with strength and resolve and memories to be with us as we process hospice and its eventual conclusion.

Friendship does not matter how long ago it began or even if it began just yesterday, it only matters in the love it shares, not in its length of time.

Friendship is the ability to tolerate disagreements with laughter.

It is acknowledging the grace of difference with respect and courtesy.

It is an internal awareness that you have been together before life began and a knowing that you will be together again and again forever.

There is fragrance in friendship. There is a shared cadence of the heart, both the heart within and the heart in spirit.

Friendship is the eternal proof that love exists beyond family, choices and circumstance.

A Poetic thought

A Dream

©2015 Rolland G. Smith

Within the coolness of the night

I watched a cotton-batten sky.

The drifting blanket clouds of mist

Caught the portal of my eye.

Then other issues held my mind

So I could not become the drift,

But I will keep the image close

Reminding me of spirit’s lift.

The Internet

I marvel these days at the availability of global information. Granted, the Internet is suspect in many areas of truth and accuracy, but it is still a window on the world.

It is a technological gift to humankind providing we employ discernment in what we think we see and what other people tell us.

Several decades ago when I was in high school the only port to the distant and obscure parts of the world was National Geographic magazine. Schools had shelves of the yellow covered magazines. In leisure or in research we could pull one out and see a part of the world’s culture in color.

Today the visual Internet provides a similar experience, but with sound, action and explanations of life and lives everywhere.

Most of us are lucky enough to be part of an extraordinary advanced civilization. Now, if we just don’t mess it up with prejudice, greed, and pride. It’s not the oneness that’s the miracle of life, it is the diversity within the oneness.

Where to see eternity!

Did you know you could see the vastness of the universe in a single flower?

The mystery of wonder is deep within each blossom. The magic of creation is in every petal, every color and every fragrance.

There is only one trick to seeing it all. Time! So many of us rush by a flower’s beauty or a garden’s grace and fail to see the simple connection of awe.

The next moment you see a flowering plant or flower garden take the time to look and see and wonder at the creativeity of All That Is.

Magnificence will come to mind.

There is a corresponding awareness in the universe itself. Look at some of the phenomenal photographs from the Hubble telescope and tell me you do not see a budding flower in the swirling galaxies of space.

There is an unscented fragrance to its visible form. There are colorful plumes in its unfolding beauty. There is mystery in our not knowing what’s happening light years away and there is magic in our wonder.

There are so many connections in our daily lives that lead us to wonder, but we pass them by without a thought. All it takes is a moment, a pause, in the illusion of time to connect to the grace of eternity, the NOW.