Article by Make The Days Count Contributor Marie Monroe

 

I read somewhere about the 50 or so names an arctic indigenous people have for various types of snow.  Being a fan of weather (that’s a long story … I can watch the weather channel for hours.  I think it all started in Ms. Pitcock’s 3^rd grade science class in, say, 1964?  Anyway …) 

 

Back to precipitation.  So, I’ve carried that fascination for decades now.  50 names for snow?  50 types of snow?

 

I took this in as fact.  I decided instantly that, of course, there are that many types of snow and if I only knew them … it’s still on the “Things-To-Do-Before-I-Die” List – or Bucket List -  to learn them.

 

However, way down here in the lower 48 (apparently Hawaii doesn’t count; it’s too far West and not contiguous), I’ve translated the concept in my own way into my own favorite form of precipitation - Rain.

 

Rain and I have been friends for a long time.  I like songs about rain.  I like movies that have rainy scenes.  Oh, and I like to talk about it.  And yes, write about rain.  I’ve even done art about rain.

 

It’s been several years ago now that I really got into rain in my art.  It was an exciting time.  I felt like I was onto something extraordinary, finishing up a lifelong adventure somehow.  Just after I started the rain art I went bounding into my co-worker’s office one morning and said, “Hey, Kim, I’ve started my Rain Series and I’m having a blast!”  It was my emotional equivalent of parasailing or parachuting for the first time.

 

My own office was piled high with stacks of art that my patients had done - drawings and paintings of painful things, of wishes, hopes and dreams for healing - so any opportunity I had for my own art-making  was a joyous and energizing event for me.  I had to announce my fun and went next door to tell my work neighbor ASAP one morning.  I blurted out my excitement:  I’ve been drawing and painting rain!

 

She smiled and nodded.  I just stood there smiling not really knowing what else to say.  Well, she asked, still smiling at me, how many forms of grace did you come up with?

 

Grace?  I turned it over in my mind like a new toy.  Grace?  I’m talking about rain … then it settled into place with a definite click:  Grace!

 

She had nailed it.  She named once and for all something I’d been trying to name for decades. 

 

Rain - hearing it, smelling, seeing, feeling it - all of that was grace for me.  Rain falling, pelting, drenching, pouring, sprinkling out of the sky did feel that way … it was that way.  It was grace.

 

So, now long after my first fascinations with weather balloons and isotopes, with cumulus clouds and jet streams, I finally had the opportunity, and the newfound ability, to talk about my own many names for rain.  They weren’t as utilitarian as the names for arctic snow.  The Artic natives needed to distinguish between snow that would trap you for days and your provisions might run out … to snow that would bring better fishing conditions.

 

But my own list of distinct and separate names for rain was rapidly piling up into just as impressive a list as that:

 

Tic-Tac Rain, I said.  You know the kind that sounds like when you rattle a plastic container of those little breath mints?

 

And Chocolate-Sauce-Bayou-Swelling-Muddying-Everything-Up Rain, I said.  Oh, yes…she’d lived in Louisiana.  She knew.

 

And Rat-a-Tat-On-The-Tin-Roof-Pelting-Cozy-At-Grandma’s-House Rain?  Mmmm, she said, remembering it, too.

 

Then, Fat-Citrusy-Juice-of-Sunshine-Still-Shining-Warm-Summer-Soft-Plomping Rain?  She knew it.

 

Strings-Of-Water-Dancing-In-The-Rippling-Puddles-Play-In-It-If-Mama-Will-Let-You Rain?  One of my favorites, she said…

 

Sideways-Stinging-Get-Home-Quick-Because-Things-Might-Start-Flying-Around Rain?  Oooh, yes! she said with excitement.  She liked precipitation, but her heart really belonged to the wind, all types of wind.

 

And Sheet-Of-Soak-You-Through-And-Through-Drop-The-Temperature-Fast-And-Freeze-You Rain? I asked.  Uh huh, did that and had to cower under a tree shivering till I could run for it, she said.  Thought I’d freeze to death in August!

 

And, Driving-Aimlessly-At-Night-Just-So-You-Can-Watch-The-City-Lights-Reflect-Off-Everything Rain?  Yep. Love it.

 

And, Pull-Over-it’s-Moving-Through-Fast-To-Settle-In-Up-The-Road-So-Better-Drive-The-Rest-Of-The-Way-On-Alert Rain?

 

Precious-It’s-Been-Dry-So-Long-I-Thought-I’d-Die Rain?  Absolutely. 

 

Misty-Light-Jacket-Wearing-Sounds-Like-Ripping-Adhesive-Tape-Off-Your-Skin-To-Get-It-Over-With-Fast-On-The-Pavement-When-Cars-Go-By Rain?  She nodded.  Nice one for evening walks in the fall, she said…

 

Hmmm, I thought, how amazing is this?!  I am finding my rain types and someone else understands them!  Is this how the Arctic snow-watchers did it?

 

Since then I’ve continued to study rain and I’ve studied grace a little bit.  Just watching mostly and talking with others from time to time.  My friend had flung open a new door to wonder and spirit for me when she named my love of rain.  After that I found some interesting things …

 

I found that grace is a form of thanksgiving.  Saying grace over food says I am grateful for my sustenance, but it also reminds me that what I need will come just because and I’m thankful that just by being alive I deserve that.  I also found that, in my life, any type of grace is a gift, an unearned gift, a gift just because …

 

because, some people say, because you exist,

because you deserve it just by being alive,

because that’s the way things work in this world,

because God loves you unconditionally,

because all loving parents, evenly Heavenly ones, treat their children from time to time …

just because.

 

Someone ‘accused’ me of being in a state of grace once.  It was a sweet, private little comment made by Eddie, a friend of mine who had a voracious appetite for philosophy and theology.  I was sitting in a very busy roomful of people at a party.  I was alone, thinking how unself-conscious I felt, how perfectly at ease I was to simply be there.  It was one of those moments we have when we, half-jokingly will say “Oh, if something like this had happened when I was younger I would have been mortified!”  Just a statement about the painful parts of youth, the difficulties of socializing and our self-consciousness when we want to fit in.

 

But there I was.  Content.  Fitting in without doing anything, without earning my right to be in this gathering with chit-chat or wit or charm. 

 

Eddie came over and sat down.  I remember sitting there quietly beside him, still content, not having to do or say anything, still absorbed in what I had been feeling before he joined me.  After awhile he leaned in very confidentially and said, I was watching you sitting here by yourself and had this thought: “She’s in a state of grace.”

 

It was one of the most touching moments of my life.  I felt complimented, of course, but more than that.  I felt right.  I felt like nothing needed to be said or changed, done or explained.  I don’t remember saying anything to Eddie when he said that.  I imagine that I nodded and went back to my sweet stillness where I was a happy part of everything without doing anything.  I was a part of everyone there just by being still. 

 

I hadn’t thought about naming that moment before he said it, but I immediately knew that he was right. It was one of my early brushes with considering what grace is.

 

I knew as I sat there just being, not earning my place or my right to belong…just being in the world, my rightful place…I knew then that this is simply the way the world works.  And, I saw, for those few minutes, that I could be in those right places anytime. 

 

I understood that grace just comes and that it would come unexpectedly to settle in perhaps to pelt, sprinkle or patter me.  I couldn’t predict how it would be.  I’d have to wait and see.  I understood that my part was to be in it when it came.  Simple.  Perfect.

 

Now that I look back, I was right.  Grace has come from time to time and it has come in various, unexpected forms at unexpected times, but it has always suspended me in that same contentment when it’s come.  Like snowflakes, I think today as I imagine my arctic friends, fellow connoisseurs of precipitation.  Grace is like snowflakes.  Grace comes in forms never seen before, but the cumulative effect is familiar.  Grace falls from the sky…

 

I feel compelled to hold out hope that grace will come, to help people remember that.  It will come however it comes, but it will come to hold you for awhile and it will be a sweet while.  You won’t know exactly when it will happen.  It comes tiptoeing in like a loving parent to tuck us in just because…

 

Grace does come.

 

And when it comes, I promise you that it is, as they say, in all its infinite forms as right as rain.

 

“Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.”

-Jonathan Edwards

 

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