It’s beginning to rain! Welcome, wet, random drops fall on my head and arms as I sit in my yard on an early mid-July morning waiting for the sun. Warm drops begin to hit my Kindle and they sing just like they are supposed to: “pitter-patter , pitter-patter.” It sounds to me like “Go-back-inside! Go back inside!” So, I gather my stuff —coffee-cup, Kindle, cell-phone– and move inside. But, to whoever prayed the rain dance this morning, thank you!
We Catholics also helped to orchestrate this dance of the raindrops We’ve been praying for farmers who have been watching their parched corn and soybean fields and hoping for a steady, ample rain.
It’s later in the morning now and raining strong. The earth needs the water. It doesn’t puddle but soaks deep into the soil. My tomato plants have been struggling this summer, all four of them. I have hopes now that they will perk up as this soaking rain trickles down to their roots.
It’s amazing what rain will do. My wilted basil plant now stands proudly erect and my front porch planter looks jaunty with it’s red geraniums, yellow pansies and purple something-or-others,poking out from leafy, green stems . There is poetry in this scenario of rain and plants..
One of my favorite poets is the nineteenth century Jesuit curate, Gerard Manley Hopkins who wrote often of nature. One of his dearest poems has the rain reminding him that the birds are out there building nests in bushes and chanting about it each morning. The bushes themselves are deeply green and thick with branches, Everything is giving birth out there along a hillside. Beautiful!
What I am going to do next is sinful. I’m going to paraphrase one of Father Hopkins greatest poems. It’s a dishonor to a poet to try to explain what a poem means because the poet intends every word and each word is part of that creation. However, Hopkins’s style is unique and I’d have to recite the entire poem to get to what I want to say about it. So, forgive me, Gerard.
In his poem, “Thou art Indeed Just, O Lord,” Hopkins complains about God not answering his prayers. He feels so dry and confronts the Lord about his frustration because not one of his dreams has flourished and born fruit as he had expected. Hopkins speaks for each of us who feel disappointment and confused when our prayers are not answered in the way we had hoped. What follows is my sinful paraphrase of the ending of that poem:
. “What about me?” Father Hopkins prays. “Where is my lush interior garden? Why do all my endeavors seem to dry-up? Why do you not answer my prayers, I who spend my life serving you? Where are my blessings, my verdant graces?”
Hopkins ends his poem with this plea: “Mine, Lord! Send my roots rain!” (Find Hopkins’ poem here.)
In the end, Hopkins continues to pray for grace to rain down down on his efforts. You and I like Hopkins continue to pray through our disappointments and dryness. We know that grace will come. The rain of God’s mercy will fall drop by drop upon us but –Darn it!–we have to wait.