Washed

8"x10" Vancouver Morning

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain crinkling.  Instead of being instantly dismayed I simply listened to the sound of water falling from the sky. I did not flavour it with the sweet taste of goodness or the bitterness of bad.  It sounded like someone gently crinkling paper, that's all, a simple sound. This could be the year the west coast invents a whole dictionary of rain. The Inuit purportedly have many words for snow, not just one. So it could be sogging out there right now or damping this afternoon.  And of course it was crinkling this morning. Apparently the number one topic for polite conversation in Canada is the weather, so there's been lots of chit chat about the rainy cool, greyness here. At least one local has decided to make a personal appeal to the sun by dancing. Some have taken to calling this month Juneuary.

Archipelago of the Heart 12"x24"

But the word that the rain whispered to me this morning was "washed". It wasn't oh #!%* it's raining again (seems I've caught punctuation mouth from my daughter).  It reminded me of a blog post I read at Mystic Meandering recently. Sometimes when we find ourselves repeatedly in difficult situations, there is a thing that happens inside.  Sometimes we can get so bombarded by life that the whining and wanting drops away. If you've ever been besieged by a series of difficult circumstances, especially big ones, it's like our ground gets "washed" away. We can become someone we hardly know as we enter a "groundless" space. We stop bargaining and hoping and just do what needs to be done. We might feel like we are drowning, we might feel like we're not handling it very well or we might not think about it at all. A little bit of self has been washed away, maybe momentarily, maybe forever. RM Jiyu Kennett from the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives used to say something like "the karmic washing is excruciating but the bathing is exquisite." I may be way off on the quote but I think she was speaking to how difficulties can "wash" away things like hopes and fears and leave us with an equanimity, an acceptance of what is. In a small way all this "weather" has washed away a little bit of the sun whiner in me (at least for now).

20"x24" On the easel

So if we are lucky life will offer us a "washing" every now and then. And perhaps if we take small washings on a regular basis, the bigger washings won't scrub us so raw when they arrive. Because, inevitably a little or a lot of rain is going to fall on us all some day. May your "washing" be gentle and come with earth friendly, non toxic ingredients.

I will end with a bit from my current read, "Gardening At Dragon's Gate by Wendy Johnson: "Three-quarters of the body of the earth is covered by water, alive and circulating, while our own bodies are at least 60 percent water. "Chemically speaking" runs a passage from the 1846 Farmers' Almanac, " a human being is 45 pounds of carbon diffused through 5 1/2 pails of water." From the depths of our cells, in the moisture of blood and sweat, tears and saliva, water speaks to water."