It's Raining, It's Pouring. Thank God!

"Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life." --John Updike

The rain finally came. In this part of God’s Creation, it returned to us last Monday morning.

It arrived in the familiar way it sometimes does in spring and summer, first with the gentle “ssshhhh” of tentative drops falling from heaven onto outstretched leaves, that catch the water, drink it all up.  Then it got a bit louder, more like a “tap, tap, tap” as the drops got bigger and pitter pattered in a faster and faster rhythm, plopping into fast growing puddles. Then it finally roared, the rain coming down hard and fast, the sound so comforting, a torrent finally felt again, skies opening forth, the parched earth drinking up the precious water it had missed so much.

For those keeping track (I know I certainly am) when it rained in Massachusetts on September 5^th, it was the first significant, sustained, and measurable rainfall since mid-June. The summer months of 2022 that just ended (June, July, and August) were the driest months on record and almost 39 percent of Massachusetts was deemed as being in an extreme drought.  

That lack of rain was also accompanied by high, hot, and humid temperatures.  The second week of August was one for the record books around here: almost a week of 95 degree plus days and sweaty and sticky nights and oppressive heat, some of the worst we’ve ever experienced. I know because in the midst of that I was crazy enough to bike in a charity ride some 82 miles, on a day it hovered right around 100 degrees. I felt like a frying egg in a red-hot pan, the heat wafting up in waves from the sizzling blacktop.

No fun.

So, I thank God for the rain.  As one who usually finds some reason to complain about the weather, as do all New Englanders (what else would we talk about?!), in the last few years I’ve run out of superlatives to describe the elements and climate. Hottest, coldest, driest, wettest.  Seems like the past few years have contained so many weather extremes and then some.

No complaints this week.

Just deep gratitude for precipitation falling from the sky.  Rain is a precious natural phenomenon so easy to take for granted, to just assume it will always come back eventually. Right?  We’ve all got our sad stories of rainy days ruining our plans. Like the rainy September day I had to quickly move my cousin’s wedding from the patio at the golf club into the living room and fast, as the rain fell down. Tuxedo clad grooms and bedecked bridal attendants danced between the raindrops in a mad scramble for shelter.  In one June deluge, it rained so hard and so fast at the church parsonage the water poured down and piled up in an epic flood.  The water was so high against the side of the house when I looked through my ground level cellar windows, it resembled an aquarium! Rained out ball games. Cancelled picnics. Wet and drippy vacations when it rained all day, and we stayed inside. 

Even so I don’t know if I will ever complain about the rain again, at least not so casually or quickly or unthinkingly. It’s been a sobering and scary few years for all of the weather.  Wildfires and record droughts and water bans and super-sized hurricanes and king tides: we are living in climatologically challenging times.  Forget about whether or not your skeptical neighbor or crazy aunt “believes” in climate change. It’s real. It’s now.  It’s no longer some far-off possibility, the stuff of “what if?” and speculation.

Nope. Climate change has arrived with a vengeance.  It’s not just about our grandchildren either. It’s about us and the survival of the rest of the world too.  So, the next time I drive my car through knee deep puddles, I will listen to the swish of water up to my car doors and see that as a gift. I will listen to the thrum of rain on the roof as the best natural lullaby of all. I will look at the beautiful plants and trust that their parched brownness will give way to vibrant green again and hopefully, very soon.

Rain, rain go away. Come back some other day? Ah…..no.  We need you right now, rain. To parch our thirst. To save our gardens. To remind us of what a miracle and how fragile is this Eden that God gave us, that we call earth, and we call home.

God knows we’ve only got one planet to spare. May the rain move us to better love mother earth.

Now…back to the lovely rain.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.