The Music of Rain and Time

This year, our winter rains arrived in perfect rhythm to the season. I love the music of that rain on our log home’s metal roof. It’s a song of peace to me; also a song of abundance. Nothing would ever grow and thrive, without the song of the rain—especially in the Oregon forest, where the climate evolved to absorb those rains.

I used to take the rain’s music on the roof for granted, as the forest surely did too. Rain was a reliable song, fall through spring, harmonizing beautifully with the annual chill, the slow days of the winter holidays, the time to go inward and reflect upon the year.

I don’t take either rain or time for granted anymore, though. Recent years have been erratically, ominously dry. Also, as I age, time sings to me of the diminishing number of years I have left in this earthly realm.

I could easily sing a song of crisis in response, as the climate changes in dangerous ways, and as my body begins its slow turn towards return to the earth. It would be easy to harmonize with the daily stark black headlines. But there are enough of such songs, and I find they are not mine to sing.

The songs of rain and time with which I choose to harmonize are those embracing change. They’re songs of understanding life’s underlying persistence; of the myriad forms in which new life emerges in unimaginable ways. Just as has been true in my own small life, the earth itself takes crisis and slowly turns it into new forms of thriving life. The earth sings to me of constant transformation; of our own ability to accomplish it within, given discipline in adaptation, and yes, celebration.

I hear and celebrate life’s persistence in the song of frogs in a pond near where I sleep tonight, away from home. I didn’t imagine their existence, yet here they are, exuberantly vocal, as alive and thriving as anyone ever. Their ancestors have been here for ages, yet their simple instinctive songs focus on this moment. Most likely, they’re only singing about finding a mate, moving their own species forward, whatever water and food they require. Yet it’s one of the most persistent survival songs I’ve ever heard. Frogs have kept on for millions of years, through ice ages, droughts, rises and falls of human civilizations, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and other unimaginable shifts.

The exuberance of their collective wild voice gives me confidence that no matter what climate or calamity arrives, life will persevere and thrive. Old life forms will adapt; new forms will arise. Eons from now, others will still sing with the music of rain and time. Surely their voices will be ones we’d never imagine, just as earlier creatures never imagined ours. I hear that truth as another sweet hymn of abundance and peace.