When the clouds descend to meet the Earth, when the rains that fall, splash back up into humid air, when the rare sandhill cranes land, barely visible, to rest on their way from someplace to some where else, when the hilltops lose their edges in the encompassing clouds, When no photo can capture the ephemeral wild beauty, when the budding trees decorate the hillside like flowers in a garden, celebrating the wild unknown~ That is when the rains arrive.

This type of rain, that arrives before the trees have fully unfurled their leaves, comes with an insistence that all matter must release its hard edges and melt like butter into puddles. It is not personal, it simply Is.

This rain runs deep into my roots like the rain that streams down the tree's bark to feed the roots. In this rain, all hardness melts and the inner, deep rivers of life renew into mossy softness. There, in the heart of hearts, all resistance dissolves.

This rain, coming soft or hard, lands on earth that already seems impossibly drenched today. The Earth receives still more, and brings the pooling rains down deep into the the roots of all. The trees and rain remind me that there is always deeper I can go, as well. I listen to my heart and melt deeper still. Resistance to the pooling is indeed futile. Today, there is no escaping the presence of the melting forces. When I finally relinquished resistance, and my busyness dissolves and I give in to weight of the Presence, I feel Great Relief. Ahh... then, the pressure becomes boneless deliciousness. I welcome the melting

Then, I, like the trees who welcome the presence and drink deeply of the life that is running in rivelets to their root system, and who drink deeply from this Goddess of form and formlessness, I, like them, also can drink deeply, letting the the rains nourish deep into my sinews. Today, I feel nourished where I had become clogged. I breathe in this new life. Like roots that tentatively grow into new areas, I feel my sinews tentatively relaxing, unfurling like moss fronds drinking and expanding into new places.

All life unfurls first within. The transition before the outward growth of a tree occurs every year, deep in the heart wood, the roots, the underground and in the unseen. The deep nourishment, the deep dive in the heart and sinews happens first. Soon enough will be the time for flowering. For now, there is the puddling, the diving, the unwinding and unfurling, the making of new inner connections. These connections may be long lost friends, or new revelations. Connections not seen since last Spring, when the rains came then, and woke up the inner Spring once more, from the long winter sleep. These connections will fuel us for times of outward growth.

No need to rush this,
Soon enough it will end, and busyness regain attention.
For now, I relish this time of deep stillness, breathing, and presence. A time to drink deeply of the waters and puddle in bed with a book, a cat and softness.

Happy puddling dear friends, and happy feeding your soul.

PS: After writing the above, large thunder came, and heavier downpours. It came as if to help us remember our comparative size in the map of the universe. To help us remember to surrender to the Presence much larger than ourselves. A presence that also lives within ourselves.

"We can't afford not to open our hearts... There comes a time when we realize we'd rather be vulnerable and hurt, then dead, in a dead-to-life sense of dead... Then we fall in love again, and the cycle renews, until finally we fall in love with love itself..... We fall In-To Love, In-To ourselves, where there is only Love, and we merge with the Beloved."
*Ram Dass*