Mark Green's Atheopaganism Blog

Thankfully, it appears California has dodged drought conditions this winter. Heavy streams of moisture-laden tropical air have been pouring over us, delivering the life-giving blessing of water.

It is indeed the season I celebrate as Riverain, historically the wettest time of year around here, and in the squishy sodden turf and puddles and lovely pouring wetness I see blessing and joy. How crisp and clean the air is! How cozy to duck indoors as it steadily falls!

Elsewhere, of course, it is still dry, even in parts of California. Or buried under snow, which is its own deep and mysterious magic. But I was born and spent my first years in a place where water from the sky was so rare as to be miraculous, and I have never wavered from my delight in it.

Some might think it odd, that pouring rain should cheer me up in the face of increasingly dark national and international news, of the prospect that the sixth Great Extinction is upon us…of our own doing and due to our own damnable cleverness.

Still, something must. We must awaken each day, take a breath and go forward, and there is nothing like the great inspiration of Nature and its magnificent phenomena to stir the heart, to bring the sense that ahhh…this is Life.

I’ve seen many rainbows recently. Crepuscular rays like the announcement of a god, angling down through stormy clouds; the Moon, steadily growing now, ringed with rainbow haloes in a Wuthering Heights sky.

Is it “enough”? I don’t know. But it brings little moments of happiness, and it is little moments of happiness that feed us enough to carry on despite the harshness of some of our circumstances.

I have struggles and challenges, and I live with fear. But these little moments say to me, Life is worth it. They say that despite struggles, despite trepidations, despite obstacles and disappointments and unfulfilled desires, this is a world worth being in, worth fighting for.

The rain pours a libation on me, and I am clean.