Friday Rain Blogging

We had a wonderful rain last night. It left the ground damp and the plants ecstatic. (Made weeding v easy!)

And I love to fall asleep to Summer rain.

Open the window, and let the air
Freshly blow upon face and hair,
And fill the room, as it fills the night,
With the breath of the rain's sweet might.
Hark! the burthen, swift and prone!
And how the odorous limes are blown!
Stormy Love's abroad, and keeps
Hopeful coil for gentle sleeps.

Not a blink shall burn to-night
In my chamber, of sordid light;
Nought will I have, not a window-pane,
'Twixt me and the air and the great good rain,
Which ever shall sing me sharp lullabies;
And God's own darkness shall close mine eyes;
And I will sleep, with all things blest,
In the pure earth-shadow of natural rest."

- James Henry Leigh Hunt, A Night Rain in Summer

Dear Weather Gods,

Just a suggestion.

Love,

Hecate


PS Thank you for the rain we got yesterday. Please send more.

Saturday Poetry Blogging/Rain Spell

We overcome this wind.
We desire the rain to fall,
that it be poured in showers quickly.
Ah, thou rain, I adjure thee fall.
If thou rainest, it is well.
A drizzling confusion.
If it rains and our food ripes, it is well.
If the young men sing, it is well.
A drizzing confusion.
If our grain ripens, it is well.
If our women rejoice,
If the children rejoice, if the young men sing,
If the aged rejoice,
An overflowing in the granary.
A torent in flow.
If the wind veers to the south, it is well.
If the rain veers to the south, it is well.

~John S. Mbiti in Earth Prayers from Around the World, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon

Picture found here.

The Old Man Is Snoring

It's pouring.

I mean that water is literally pouring down from the sky and has been, more or less, for days. The result is plantlife so green that it pulses, shines, shimmers. Water that rushes in rippling mini-streams down my street to the storm sewers marked "Chesapeake Bay Drainage." A Potomac River turned deep brown and choppy from the erosion running into it and the wind whipping its surface into waves. Grateful centuries-old oak trees in my yard, drinking their first real full since last summer's long drought. Earthworms flooded out of their homes to make easy pickings for the mourning doves and cardinals and robins and sparrows who will be fine if they don't lose too much more oil off their wings due to the water.

Oddly, for a woman who's been a witch for nigh on twenty years, I can count on one hand the times that the Goddess has shown up in my dreams. As I've recounted before, Brigit is not a Goddess with whom I feel a special affinity -- not like I do for Hecate or Baba Yaga or Hestia -- but she placed herself front and center in one of the central dreams of my life. And in that dream, she stood with me inside a safe, warm, snug cottage in Ireland and put her right arm around my shoulders and made me feel completely at peace looking out a window at a rain exactly like this rain. What she made me feel was the innate goodness of rains like this, the wonderful store that they lay up for us to draw from in July and August, the sweet, sweet safety of tight roofs and thick walls.

May you dance naked and wet in the lovely rain and may you come inside to dry towels and warm fires and hot tea.

There's Little On Earth That I Love More Than I Love The Sound Of The Rain

Love, if you love me, lie next to me, be, for me, like rain.

And Then, It Rained

It's been such a long dry summer. I've watered, and watered, and watered my garden and my trees, getting a water bill that's double last year's. But that's only been to do triage, to try to keep alive my oak trees that were here when the American Revolution happened, to keep the expensive new toad lillies and the ancient rhododendron alive, to keep the moonflowers that Ruth sent to me, and the roses that I bought, and the gardenias that scented this entire Spring, alive.

But this morning, at about five o'clock, I woke up to the sound of rain on the roof. What an amazingly lovely sound. It's been so absent, lately. And, wonder of wonders, this evening, it was still raining. On Wednesday evenings, I get together with some amazing witches and we do ecstatic dance and eat a healthy potluck meal to which we each contribute. Tonight, after dancing and catching up with each other, we had collards and mustard greens, Susan Weed's cancer prevention cabbage and sea weed, garden squash and kashi, and cheese. We ate out on my screen porch and I kept interrupting the conversation to say, "Wow. I love the sound of the rain." My sisters indulged me. The rain is as if the Goddess just kept saying over and over and over again, "I love you. I love you. I love you."

Tomorrow, I'll gather with the women in my circle to do magic for two of us who need magic. Next week, I'll dance on Tuesday, instead of Wednesday, because Wednesday is the high holy day for my circle: Samhein. On Wednesday, we'll eat a dumb supper to honor the ancestors and do divination for the coming year. Magic matters, in my life, and my life is full of magic.

I wish that you could hear this rain, hear the thirsty earth drinking it in, hear the oaks and the datura and the thyme and the sage and the basil and the bee balm and the budelia drinking their fill for the first time in months. I wish that you could smell it through my open windows, dance in it with me under the full October moon, as we move from Libra to Scorpio, I wish that you could see, moment to moment, what it's doing for the thirsty plants.