"A rainbow is how light finds its way through the tears of the sky." -- Woo Du-An
One of America's most popular jazz songs is the tune "Stormy Weather," written in 1933. I suspect that classic has endured the test of time because it so honestly and directly expresses the universal experience of hard times and the misery of unrequited love.
So how do we deal with stormy weather in our lives? There is no simple answer for that, but there are a lot of things that help: friends, prayer, acceptance, endurance, exercise, meditative practice, watching "Dancing With the Stars" -- every little thing that reminds us to be our own best friend even when the sky is falling.
Sometimes it helps to stop for a moment and just let the rain fall. When we're going through a stormy time it's hard to see beyond our veil of tears, but God is right there in every tear that's shed.
We are a collection of dark and light. This is part of the complexity of the human moment. This will never change. We are a collection of motivations, abilities and personalities. Some visible. Much invisible. What is sometimes hard to believe is that within the secret journey of the heart God is our companion equally within the dark and the light.
The soul is a lot more magnanimous than we are. When we're in the dumps we will tend to project our lack of magnanimity upon, well, pretty much everything. But remember when you toss in the compost, when you aerate the soil, the dirt becomes fertile. When you allow the water of love to digest what you fear is rotten you prepare the ground for new life. You don't amend the soil with a shiny piece of stainless steel; you add things that are juicy, stinky and weird. We are the garden that receives the rain. What we do to mix the dark and the light and all the shades in between to allow new life forms the substance of the journey between birth and death.
It is when there is a parting, a time of change when our heart is aching and our mind does not have answers that we have an opportunity to fall into grace. In the exposure of leave taking there's not much to conceal the light of our vulnerability. Yes, that is exactly what I meant to say: "The light of our vulnerability." If we can pause for a moment and just let the rain fall, witness the weather and the changing landscape as something new and unknown in the process of creation, take a breath of curiosity and wonder, there is an inner light that will provide sufficient illumination to take us through the night. The moment becomes more vivid. There is a quality of awakening. We're a little less frightened of life. And because we have nothing left to hide or to lose, we can sit in the presence of an aching heart and just be there. We can witness the rainbow.
Woo Du-An, internationally known shaman, healer, spiritual teacher, lives in the Colorado Rocky Mountains
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