btw – it’s raining again (umbrellas, masks etc.) – Derek Maul: Words, Photographs, and Food for the Journey

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day—on that day all the springs of the deep sea erupted, and the windows in the skies opened. It rained on the earth forty days and forty nights. – Genesis 7:11-12

So this is it, folks; this is pretty much my constant view of the world here in Wake Forest. It’s raining. It was raining yesterday. It will be raining again tomorrow. That’s what it does here, it rains.

I haven’t kept track of the rain, but Rebekah said something like this on her video blog: “If we get close to forty days and forty nights then I guess we’ll have to talk about this some more.”

Of course, for someone who grew up in the U.K. this is nothing that out of the ordinary. There is a fundamental difference when it comes to state of mind. When I moved from England to Florida the rain came hard and torrential but then blew over; people would gather in doorways waiting for it to stop. Whereas the other side of the Big Pond people walk right out into it, turning up a collar, hunching shoulders, maybe pulling out an umbrella, but there is no hesitation. Rain is a state of being, it stops nothing.

The church I attended as a child featured umbrella stands with porcelain trays, at the entrance to every pew. We wore hats, raincoats, and Wellington boots if necessary.

In my Wake Forest neighborhood it feels like I’m one of the few who grabs an umbrella and gets my walk in regardless. You can only stand at the window and wait for it to pass for so long; eventually you have to begin to build your life around it.

Adapt and live…

Listening to myself this morning I’m wondering if the evolution of this post is subconsciously metaphorical, vis-à-vis the COVID situation?

I’m not sure. I will have to think about this some more. Honestly, I thought I was only writing about the rain; but maybe this extended lockdown has been on my mind too?

We really can’t stand at the window and wait for this to go away. But we can’t go out and pretend it’s not “raining” either. Life must go on, but so must our “umbrellas” and our “raincoats” and sometimes even our “Wellington boots.”

The bottom line here is that life is supposed to be lived – out in the rain and in the context of community – not watched from the sidelines. But how we live must also be engaged responsibly, with all the creativity and inventiveness our abilities can muster.