A GREAT TIME FOR RAIN
It’s Sunday evening and I’m sitting next to my friends and their collective six kids at Mass. I’m on and off focused. Alert to the Deacon’s homily story from his young days as a chef and how he threw a fork and it stuck in a waiter’s ear. (Cue an audible gasp from elderly lady nearby.) But less focused on the message of conversion to follow. Mindlessly twirling the hair of my friend’s eight-year-old next to me. Thinking about whether or not I have enough socks to get me through the week without having to do laundry. Thinking about the purpose of my life. Thinking about how I should sit up straighter. Thinking about how I can get out of something painful like forgiveness. Thinking about how happy the dog was to have dinner early tonight.
It’s during this half-hearted attempt at attention that the dark nighttime skies open for a full-on downpour. Rare for my part of the world. The roof of the Church has an opaque skylight and the noise is deafening. The children erupt in wide-eyed whispers. Certainly nobody is paying attention now. They all have to ask if it’s rain. All have to tell someone else it’s raining.
These kids are the youngest ones here at this evening Mass. For a moment I wonder if I should tell them to stop whispering. (Cue me wondering what gasping lady will think).
And then I forage beneath the judgmental surface of my life and think, “well, isn’t this God.”
I fall into wonder with them. I stop looking at the pulpit and I look at the skylight. I look through the stained glass. I squeeze the ten-year-old’s hand. I allow my eyes to get big, mirroring theirs. I delight.
And I remember how I’m trying not to be so all-or-nothing these days. And I wonder at the sky and the children. And the pulpit and the deacon and the bread. And it’s all something bigger than I can hold. And after years of trying to swim in a fountain that is losing water, I pick up my bucket and slowly start to replenish its source. What a great time for it to rain.
When was the last time you gave yourself permission to wonder? How can you lean into the expansiveness of God this week?
Teresa Nygard