Showers

We all have a tendency to make quick judgments of our life experience.  In judging experiences as bad, we often miss out on their richness.  In judging experiences as good, we often feel loss as we predict their passing.   Mindfulness practice has taught me that most of our judging causes unnecessary suffering.  Through mindfulness, we learn to be with our experience exactly as it is in the moment, without judgment.  We open ourselves to the richness God pours into life when we are not categorizing experience as good or bad. 

Paradoxically, I have found that releasing judgment increases my positive emotions.  I experienced this on a rainy day this week.  With lots of complaining around me about the rain, the cloudiness, and the cold, I took time to pay attention to my actual experience of rain, without judgment.  When I stepped out of my ideas of rain into a direct experience of rain, I discovered feelings of gratitude and pleasure related to the water falling around me...the bright green colors of spring nourished by the water...the delightful sound of drops on my umbrella...the movement of the wet air on my face.  I was reminded of this passage in Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (pp. 23 & 28), and flooded with a sense of blessing:

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Ludwig Feuerbach says a wonderful thing about baptism. I have it marked. He says "Water is the purest, clearest of liquids; in virtue of this its natural character it is the image of the spotless nature of the Divine Spirit. In short, water has a significance in itself, as water; it is on account of its natural quality that it is consecrated and selected as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit. So far there lies at the foundation of Baptism a beautiful, profound natural significance."...

That mention of Feuerbach and joy reminded me of something I saw early one morning a few years ago, as I was walking up to the church. There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn't. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don't know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash.

In giving up judgment, I was freed to access the joy of God's provision through rain, to recognize the drenching of the world in God's blessing...in water...as I walked along the path.  One never knows what will show up when paying attention to the present moment!