slip-sliding away…..

Please watch the video before reading the post. Preferably full screen, high quality, and with sound…

A single drop sits on my window, surrounded by many others, as the rain lashes down on this Winter morning. It’s Saturday, so there’s no work to get to, and the kids are sleeping later. I have time to enjoy this moment, within what is my favourite season…my favourite type of weather.

I want to take in this moment. Be still. Be present. Empty my mind completely. No reflections on anything, nor thoughts of the human world that will enter my consciousness when I leave this seat.

I want to just stop and focus on this one, physical entity in front of me: this drop on my window.

I stare at it, noticing – for the very first time ever – how the view beyond it…the view through it…is inverted, like the Lensball effect. (Thank you to Facebook for pounding me with those ads.)

I look at the other drops around it. Same thing. They’re all doing it. They’re all inverting the image beyond.

How have I never seen this in my life?

As a child, I could be bored. I could sit and be utterly bored. And in those moments, I could notice such things.

No more. 

As a grown-up, I choose not to. There’s always something more appealing to see, or listen to, or do…or think of. (Although the thoughts are often involuntary.)

But there’s benefit in being bored. A lot of benefit. And I should allow it to happen more often. Especially when utterly alone. I suspect it would be most effective then, because the noise of others – both literal sound, and their energy – makes it more difficult to achieve stillness and this level of focus. And I myself am not this open – spiritually open? – when in the presence of others. I can’t describe how or why, but things are just different when others are around. I’m very sensitive to this.

Anyway…

Another drop rolls down the window, like a tear running down a face – taking mine with it. My drop is now part of an inevitable journey down to the windowsill. 

Perhaps these drops will join with others and make their way down onto the slanted roof below. Then slide down and get caught in the ball of moss that clings to the roof’s edge. Alternatively, they will fall down – onto the grass, the pavement, or into the gutter. Then be part of a river, of sorts, making its way past a few houses to the gutter’s end, where the path ends in a dead stop. Nowhere else to go.

It shall remain there until it evaporates. Up into the clouds.

My daughter told me that clouds are very heavy, physically…she’s studying it in Science. It seems strange to me – clouds holding a lot of weight. I don’t know if it’s true, or if she misunderstood. Either way, I won’t look it up now – because it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to know.

Back to my drop. Whatever natural process comes next, it will happen, as my drop is recycled, then falls again somewhere else in the city, country, or world.

This little raindrop graced my presence for a few minutes, then moved on.

Just like this soul – me – is gracing this place, this world, for a relatively short time (in the scheme of overall existence), before I will move on.

But I’m in that moment of presence right now. I’m here, now…and this is the time to be present. To be conscious that I need to disconnect from everything artificial, along with everything from the world of humans. I need to block them out for now, so that they do not intrude on my state of being.

I need to just. be. still.

And I realise that my drop – though I beheld it for the first time on my window a short while ago…it was new to me. I considered it a brand new creation. But it was not. It existed before it landed and clung to my window.

It came from the sky – from a cloud. And before that, it evaporated from the ground or some other place. And before that, it was somewhere higher, before it fell all the way down. And before that, it was perhaps on someone else’s window. And maybe someone else looked at it and pondered. Perhaps someone else – thousands of miles away – found beauty in it. Used it as a means of focus, as I did, before it moved on.

Who knows?

Only the Almighty knows.

God knows the journeys of every single drop. Every single minute item in this world – even in the deepest part of the ocean or soil underground.

And we are just….miniscule actors in the grander scheme of life and the world.

Yet we have access to Him. Direct, intimate access. We can speak to Him. If not in words from our mouths, then through connection from our hearts…even when our minds cannot find the words to express what we are feeling, or wanting.

So, as we make our way through this world – through this temporary existence – may we always remember that, like a single raindrop journeys far and wide, through various stages of existence, we do, too. And the Almighty is aware of our states of being at every single moment. He knows our journeys: what’s come before, where we are now, and what’s still to come.

Closer than your jugular vein…the One Who made you, provides for you, and knows you better than you know yourself. The One you will return to one day.

May it be the best day of your life…