Thirst

It rained this weekend--lovely, thirst quenching, rain barrel filling, dancing, singing, blessed rain. I think it's been a month since significant rain fell on my garden. On Friday night I stood on my deck, turned my face to the sky and let it wash away the dusty draggy feeling of drought. The rain washed over me as it filled the pores of the garden. Renewal.

I get tired of the summer garden, watering and weeding. The plants look tired, too. I water, and it keeps the plants alive, but it can never be the same as Mother Nature's rain. This summer I am being intentional about loving the garden through the dry periods, the time span when there seems to be no growth (except for the crabgrass and ground ivy; though if not for those and other exotic "grasses" I would have no lawn). Does God as gardener get tired of me during my frequent droughts? Or does the Gardener wait it out with me, pay closer attention to me, patiently helping me see beauty in my life when it seems there is none? And so I am looking hard for the less transparent beauty in the garden. I am staying outside in the heat so I can see. Here is what caught my eye this week:
     1 The sparrows at the cafe where I write were back with their young. They perched on the edge of my table, they bounced around looking for food, the mama checked out a couple of things and rejected them (I think it was sugar granules from my scone--perhaps she knew it was not nutritiously worthy of feeding to her offspring). She fed the youngsters in turn, even though one wanted more than its share. A young one chirped indignantly when the family flew off without it before it wanted to go.
     2 There was a bright green dragon fly on the Carolina jasmine on my porch rail, and a baby praying mantis on the summer phlox.
     3 I harvested my first two sunflowers. I have been watching for the seeds to turn the characteristic black striped that we know of sunflowers seeds in the cellophane bag at the market. I cut the two down and hung them upside down in a paper bag in my shed until the seeds finish drying and fall out. They will provide food for the birds this winter.
     4 In times of drought, the plants put all their energy into preserving their core. Many of them don't flower, they don't grow, some wilt (as much from heat as from lack of water--like me). After the rain the blooms on the plants pop back within hours: the pentas, the Mexican heather that hasn't bloomed for many weeks, the impatiens. I swear the clumps of vinca and marigolds in my front garden doubled in size between Saturday morning (before the rain) and Sunday morning. All that was wilted is standing straight. Some have burned leaves from the heat and drought; they will take longer to fully recover, but they will. They will recover in spite of the parts that are lost.
     5 The Sum and Substance giant hosta and the Purple Heart have funnel shaped leaves; it's as if they were designed to catch the rain and direct it to the roots.

In times of drought the plants put their energy into preserving their core. Don't we do that in our lives, too? When we are grieving or facing serious illness or transitioning, we shed all that is not essential to survival and concentrate on preserving that which is central. Sometimes all we can do during a dry spell is wait it out. One of the essentials for me during the time of waiting is tears. A bit of wisdom I learned in counseling school is that, while therapists (and friends) should keep tissues handy, we shouldn't shove them at a person at the first tear sighting. We need our tears. We need to learn to be okay with them; to welcome them as a friend. Tears let out the frustration and disappointment. Tears keep us watered and at the same time keep us from drowning in held in grief. (How ironic that a few minutes after writing these words, Leslie Gore is singing, "I'll cry if I want to" on the cafe musak.) Words on paper also take sadness out of my soul and into the world where I can look at it. And friends are essential to me. Friends who know when to push and when to hold on to me; friends who know when to let me be and when to get me into the world. Friends are central to my self-preservation.

I have noticed over the years that sometimes what I receive from friends and my writing and my prayers is not what I want to hear. Often it makes me angry and resentful to receive what I need. I don’t know if that is what happens when the plants first get the desperately needed rain and they droop from the unaccustomed weight of it, but it is what I thought of when I saw them lying prostrate on the ground during yesterday's rain. But in the end, when we are ready to let it soak in, the truth brings us back upright to the fullness of life.

Yesterday thunder rolled through the sound waves for hours. The sky turned dark with expectation of more needed, hoped for rain. And then the clouds moved on. The thunder kept rumbling in the distance, the sky turned dark again and then light again. This has happened several times over the past month, with no rain. Expectation. Disappointment. A relentless cycle. And then the rains come. So often we feel on the verge of something wonderful in our lives. We prepare for it, put all the ducks in a row to make it happen. We are ready. And then something shifts and it doesn't come. Expectation. Disappointment. 

I am rereading, for the unknownth time, one of my favorite books: Everyday Sacred by Sue Bender. I always seem to know intuitively when I need to read it again, and my eyes notice it on the shelf. The author tells the story of three bowls. "The first bowl is inverted, upside down, so that nothing can go into it. Anything poured into the bowl spills off. The second bowl is right-side up, but stained and cracked and filled with debris. Anything put into this bowl gets polluted by the residue or leaks out through the cracks. The third bowl is clean. Without cracks or holes, this bowl represents a state of mind ready to receive and hold whatever is poured into it."

The bowls remind me of the Sum and Substance hosta and the Purple Heart with their funnel leaves; holding the water until it is ready to trickle down to the core of its being. Sometimes I am that first bowl, so busy being productive or otherwise ignoring whatever it is that I don't want to look at, that I don’t notice when the very thing I want presents itself. Sometimes I am the second bowl, with such a fierce judging voice that focuses on what is not working or what is missing or the disappointments, that I am unable to see or appreciate all the things in my life that I love. And sometimes, wonderful times, I am the third bowl, able to be present and absorbed in what I am doing, whatever it is.

Most of the plants in my garden don't die from thirst, just like we don’t die from disappointments. We look to our core strength to help us hang on until we can ask ourselves again, “What do I thirst for? What do I need in my bowl? What do I want in my bowl?” And even, "What wondrous things are already in my bowl?"