Rainy Days and Monday...Grieving the Firefighters

Rainy days and Mondays don’t always get me down, contrary to the song’s true lyrics.   As I write this, it is more than raining, it is “monsooning.”   Raleigh is not usually like the rain forests of Ecuador this time of year. This day reminds me of Ecuador.  I remember staying at a grass roofed hostel in Santa Domingo de los Colorados, a city in the rain forest of Ecuador.   It rained there about every hour, in  downpours.  It was a relaxing rain, replenishing the lush forest and quenching the thirst  of the equatorial earth. It was welcomed and expected.

 Today I sit captive on my back porch, listening to the rhythm of the falling rains.  It is relaxing for a while, then disturbing as I realize there are flash flood warnings all around us.  People’s lives will be affected.  Farmers will have fields flooded and crops lost.  Lives may be lost as rivers and creeks flood their banks.

 I reflect on the fickleness of the weather this summer.  I remember the lyrics to another song, “listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, telling me just what a fool I’ve been.”  I can go that way with introspection and self-absorption if I want. But today I wonder about the foolishness of Mother Nature.  I refuse to attribute floods and droughts to God.  That’s not my theology. If it were, I’d be pretty angry with God today.  Yesterday, it was 117 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona.  Nineteen firefighters lost their lives in a raging wildfire there.   The copious rains today feel more like tears of the grieving , loud, persistent showers lamenting the cruelty of the world, but also proclaiming its awesomeness.  I can imagine the rains as God’s tears for all the grieving.

I wish God, or Mother Nature, or technology could have sent these summer monsoons westward yesterday to pour upon the fires of Arizona and save the lives of the nineteen valiant firefighters who perished there.  No words or reflections can soothe the grief of those families who have lost loved ones.  The rhythm of the falling rain reminds me that we live in a natural world of monsoons and wildfires, of sunshine and rain, all of which fall in all their fickleness upon us all. Sometimes, before I can respond or know how to respond, I just have to sit and listen to the falling rains and wonder a bit.