Raindrops and Roses
In the light of the morning
The sun is like the dawn emoji on my phone, perfectly radiant from the window of my flat outside Birmingham. A great celestial sift is shaking out the pinks and oranges and the sifter’s breath is swirling. Raindrops on the window hum of luminescent grace. There is something far greater than the walls of my being. Glistening jewels. Lapis Lazuli. There are instructions encoded in the droplets, encoded in all things that appear from earth on earth. They are here in the window and in the leaves and the flowers. I will open my mouth and let the droplets in next time I stand in the rain.
There is a rose outside the building, on the corner, in the shade now because the sun will not hit that side until evening. I always set my eyes towards it, so it knows I have seen. Rose, I see you, thank you, and droplets, thank you. The rose bush has given many flowers, and seems still to want to give more. I think she knows she is loved. It is hard not to see her as you turn the corner to the flat block and I imagine many of us thank her in our hearts and so she is blooming and blooming.
And the droplets, singing into the love of the rose. They fall on her and wet her petals, and balance and rest, quench her thirst. I wonder how much joy there is as the water rests on the rose, and the morning breaks, as the soil breathes deep into its new moisture, the dark night moved, the reality of all possibilities actualised, the droplets on the rose. I wonder if, when one drop runs down a single petal, never to materialise in that way again, if it leaves the key to death for us. If we were to watch a rose in the rain with clear sight, fear would leave us. We would tremble with love.
My heart, the heart of the rose. My body, purified by the water. My tongue silent. There I could cry and learn to rise above the strange stories of this age. We are destined for that, in the end, to know the peace of union and then to mind it all with the heart of eternity. But for now, for now, we can look and try to remember.
Some mushrooms have appeared on the lawn. They are beached in the middle of the lawn, there is no obvious logic to their appearance, no particular shade or nearness of another plant, or tree for protection.They are clumped like a little tribe, huddled, humble, loyal. Their caps of varying sizes, the ones who came first are the biggest, and the rest come in a sort of order of love. Belonging and place secure, the little ones at the edges, first to be seen, still to grow. I must pick the big ones first and give the others their moment in the sun. Or perhaps they are just mushrooms and a child will kick them over as they run for a ball.
Perhaps a droplet is just H2O in the convection cycle, perhaps the rose is of the genus Rosa and one of 140–180 species. It is hard to know what something really is. But certainty is fatal for the soul.
In Morrisons I now know the lady who often oversees the self-checkout. She has knobbly knees and shouts when she is stressed. If there is no queue, she sometimes greets me, says, hi, sweetheart, or hi, darling. When there is a big queue she shouts and looks over the top of the check-outs. She shouts, next! and points to the free till. She taps in the numbers and codes on the blocked tills without thinking about it. She is a sort of robot when it is busy. She doesn’t see me then. And I miss her then, because she is rich when she is present. Today, offering a bag, she simply said 40p or 60p? at my forehead. I said, the paper one, and she handed it to me looking the other way.
Her humanity has been supplanted by a belief system that she did not chose and does not serve her. Her knobbly knees and the way she says sweetheart dreams so much into her. Summers on the beach, friends, sweets, boyfriends maybe, a kind dad. I don’t think she cooks, but she is a woman who is prone to extravagant acts of kindness. And there she is, shouting at foreheads. She doesn’t know I have conjured here, but I am sure she will feel a brush of light, as we send love across the field it is a powerful force.
I pray for raindrops and roses and mushrooms and the self-checkout lady to feel seen and loved.
I have been engaging in some grief work with Wild Heart. They have a gorgeous, loving, brave space to bring feelings and understand them. It looks like the shape of the future, think NAAS woven with sacred femininity. Non-medical, spiritually attuned spaces where science and metaphysics meets soul and experience is where we heal. Check it out.