“May the rain fall kindly,
May daylight illuminate your hearts,
May the darkness never burden,
May those who dwell here in the unseen
Watch over your coming and going…”–John O’Donohue, from his book of blessings, To Bless the Space Between Us.
I just came in from a long walk in the rain and a hot bath in the spring. I am still thinking about saints known and unknown and what they may be trying to tell me, and you- us- about how to live.I have never seen an angel or a ghost, but every Halloween season I hope to. Perhaps, they are nearer than I know. Maybe they even have something to do with why all the leaves suddenly fell off one alder right in front of me, but stayed on the other trees. What was that about? And sometimes Trixie stares out the window, or up at the ceiling, or back over the bridge we just crossed. What can she see that I can’t? Entire worlds, I bet.
Yesterday morning, because the sunny skies had changed to gray and the rain was tapping on the roof. Chip did not go off to deer hunt at dawn. I did not walk the dogs as the sun rose out by Grave Island, so I could row my little boat afterwards, either.
Instead, at 7:30 we were still in bed. I listened to the waves meet the shore out the open window. There are people who pay for recordings of this, to calm them down. A lot of people need calming down right now. I said this is my favorite sound. But then I thought of others, and started to list them out loud: the wind through the forest at Rutzebeck, the thumps and sighs the dogs make when they settle down to rest, and the way Emilia and Henry talk in their room when the lights are out, their little voices, animated, quiet, like birds. That’s the gift from sleeping across the hall from grandchildren. “What about you?” I asked.
Chip thought a long time, and said he likes the sounds ravens make, the snap of kindling when the stove lights, and the coffee grinder, “for a little bit. At least at first.”
May you have plenty of hot coffee, a warm room to drink it in, and may the rains of November fall kindly on you, and me, and the ships at sea– on all of us.
