A rainy day – as we all know –  is indispensable. Apart from melting snow and glaciers, the water in our rivers comes from precipitation. Rivers have sustained human and animal life for millennia, including the first human civilizations. Like any day of the week a rainy day is never entirely predictable. Seldom however is a rainy day considered superfluous or undesirable – except perhaps when it figuratively attaches contrition and regret to one’s day, when things turn dark and grey and run into difficulty or even go wrong, when the psyche – the very soul, the life force, the anima, the persona, the inner most self, the ego, the pneuma – is at risk. It is then that we question the need for the rain in our lives. But it is a mistake to do so.  We need the rain. Not even ecclesiastical dispensation will modify the hardship often caused by rigorous application of general laws to particular cases of the hydrologic cycle.

The good news is that there is not only sustenance but growth from rain. I won’t, dear Reader, entangle your patience in a fruitless disquisition of the common poetry which is so often the sequel to a rainy day. Nature is a creative and controlling force; and, to that we add the native value of preserving what we know is right.

Falling back upon a clear day as the dénouement is not the only answer – though it will in fact transpire. Eventually. It is indeed this assurance which quells the pain of the bruise and the sting of the words. Yet while we may be able to shut the door on a tempest we cannot escape the internal metaphors of a rainy day. It marks our attention to detail as we draw upon its life-giving groundwater. The rain must first fall upon us and then within and from us.