Let’s just get this out of the way: iphone pandora is a tad or two better than computer pandora. Take what you will from that completely subjective statement. But it’s the facts, man.
Now that I have that off of my chest, let’s move on with some rain induced metaphors.
It has been raining a lot recently, as it tends to do in District 12 (clever points!), and the rain got me thinking deep, rainy thoughts as things tend to go in my weather controlled brain. And of course, the life soundtrack comes into play (when does it not?) here.
So there I was, thinking about Simon and Garfunkel and their groovy kind of rain-related song.
Pertinent to the metaphor lyrics:
Through the corridors of sleep
Past the shadows dark and deep
My mind dances and leaps in confusion.
I don't know what is real,
I can't touch what I feel
And I hide behind the shield of my illusion.
So I'll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall.
Simon and Gfunk, they just know what is what.
If you live in or in the surrounding areas of the District, you know, through many many opportunities to observe flowers in rainfall, that they in fact do bend under such conditions.
I submit for your perusal exhibits A, B, and C, respectively:
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| this is just pitiful |
The rules of physics are simple (hahaha) and finite (a ha a ha) and Simon and Garfunkel clearly know that the only way to fight them is by pretending they don’t exist.
So now is when metaphor numero uno debuts:
That’s what humans often do with reality. I do you do we all do the fakery. We like to pretend that it isn’t there and come up with our own brill version of it. That's basically what we call sin. My ideas are so much better than God's is what we sinners say. For example, let’s look at the way sex is portrayed in advertising, television, movies, songs etc. etc. etc: “Oh this is soooooo fun with little to no consequences when we do it outside of marriage with multiple people! YOLO! SO FUN!”.
In reality, when it’s outside of the way God intended it to be, it blows up to the max in our faces. Like any other thing in life. Apart from God, we can do nothing. Besides blow things up in our own faces and the faces of our fellow blowuppers.
Ready for it to stop raining yet?
So now here comes the great flip side metaphor and another song to add to the life soundtrack.
There’s this incredible musical you may have heard of with a French title and so much God-infused beauty it makes me a little light headed and also cry. A lot.
That line “to love another person is to see the face of God”
Well, that little line alone possesses much power over my heart and my tear ducts is just the fact of the matter.
When Eponine is dying and she sings her last breaths away, there is a line that made me love this scene so very much. It grabbed me because I love things like flowers and beauty a whole heap.
There she is, lying in the arms of the man she loves, embracing the reality of her life though perhaps not fully seeing that she has displayed the greatest love a man is capable of: “to lay down ones life for ones friend”. Her surrender to the reality before her makes this moment that could be so ugly with the suffering a thing of great beauty. Love conquers the sadness and fear of death. There is peace in surrender.
I don't feel any pain
A little fall of rain
Can hardly hurt me now
You're here, that's all I need to know
And you will keep me safe
And you will keep me close
And rain will make the flowers grow.
Acceptance of her death and the nearness of her love transforms the rain. And the rain becomes beautiful.
It gives life.
It makes the flowers grow.
But she had to sacrifice herself.
She had to embrace the pain of reality first.
When we do that, we see the Resurrection that is woven in all the suffering and deaths we experience in our lives. We see that without the death, there would be no glorious resurrection. Without the rain, there would be no flowers.
Life is full of rainy days. I am weathering some wicked dark storms right now. But I have tried enough pretending to know by experience that reality, riddled with all of the pain and sorrows, is infinitely better than whatever we try to conjure up ourselves. Reality comes from Heaven, anything else just doesn’t.
He sends us rain to heal us and to make beauty come from our lives. He has a master plan and in the rain we can have so much hope, because rain makes the flowers grow. The storms of life always have Jesus standing there in the middle of the crashing waters, calling us to Himself. Holding His hand out to us to come to Him and to trust. All is well, and we can walk on the water, too, if we keep our eyes fixed on Him. We only start to sink when we look at the waves instead of Jesus.
God uses everything. Everything we go through is His for the transforming if we just offer ourselves to Him to be transformed.
Let the rain fall and be at peace.
He is here, that’s all we need to know.
And He will keep us safe
and He will keep us close
And rain will make the flowers grow.
And remember, to love another person is to see the face of God.
There you have it. My precipitation induced musings with a little a large serving of help from my life soundtrack, God's glorious creation and His infinite Goodness, and life. Sweet screaming, pooping life (I hope there are some Juno fans out there).
PSizzle: if you are a stickler for the grammatical things of life and need a good laugh, read this: http://hyperboleandahalf.
if you need a good laugh period, read this (trust me, it gave me one of the top 3 biggest laughs of my life):
Cheers and TGIT and what not!
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| i dedicate this post to Alejandra, who is showing me by her example how to accept God's will and trust in His Goodness in the face of very very ugly weather |
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