“Cover my earth, Mother, four times with many flowers.
Let the heavens be covered with the banked-up clouds.
Let the earth be covered with fog; cover the earth with rains.
Great waters, rains, cover the earth. Lightning, cover the earth.
Let thunder be heard over the earth; let thunder be heard;
Let thunder be heard over the six regions of the Earth.”
—Zuni Prayer for Rain
How do you experience rain? Not the rain on the weather maps, but the rain that falls on you?
All my life, I lived in densely populated areas. My skies were small spaces cut out by buildings, houses, and tall trees. So when a rain storm came, it enveloped me and made me feel like my whole world had become the storm. I wouldn’t know when it would start or when it would stop. It came and went, and I was smack in the middle of it.
Then I moved to New Mexico. These big skies had been calling my soul for thirty years, and I now understand why: they aren’t just beautiful, they are also changing the way I exist.
During the summer, the humid air from the Gulf of Mexico lifts to our high desert terrain and produces tremendous scattered thunderstorms. In the vast landscapes of New Mexico, and under its big skies, those storms appear as if they’ve been magicked out of the weather maps. I can witness the rain falling near and far—some softly and others in earnest cloudbursts—blue skies in between and beyond.
The storms teach me how limited my perspective is. When I’m in one of those storms, I am not aware of the blue skies behind the torrential rain. I also cannot experience what it is like to be in that storm when I am outside of it and observing it from a safe distance.
Life is full of events like those storms. Some are nurturing, others are destructive. A storm can land softly on some of us while bringing devastation to many of us. But blue skies are also possible between the storms. Knowing this gives me the courage to go on. It also reminds me to keep widening my perspective, continuing to learn, and growing my compassion. When the storm is powerful, we need each other to weather it.
Prayer
Dearest Universe, the source of life: grant us humility to know that our perception is limited, give us genuine concern and curiosity to find out how others are experiencing this world, and nurture our creativity so we can transform that curiosity into compassion.