Healing Rain

I wrote this poem exactly a year ago so I think it deserves an airing.  I still like it as much now as I did then - which one can't always say for one's creations.  I was thinking a lot about grief at that time - I believe Helen Steiner Rice called it, mourning for the future that will not be.

When you're in mourning, for whatever loss you may be suffering - you may not be aware of your friends and loved ones pouring out their love, but it is falling on your soul nevertheless.  All we can do for others at a time like that is, just pour out love in whatever form we can, whether it's help, prayer or just cake.  We have to do it without any expectation or reaction or even visible success.  But we have to go on doing it, because that is what love does.

I have just read about the woman who started The World Needs More Love Letters in New York.  She was lonely and isolated, and felt others must be the same.  So she took to leaving simple 'love letters' on park benches and on buses hoping that someone in need might spot them.  They were brief, such as 'Don't give up on your dreams'.  Now it has turned into a huge project and the idea is spreading throughout the world.  See more at www.moreloveletters.com.   (With acknowledgement to Positivenews.org.uk)

 

Healing  Rain

I am the rain falling soft on your soul,

falling on your parched lands,
filling up the rivers of your tears.

I am the rain falling in the darkness of your night,
filling your sleep with dreams of hope.
When daylight comes, there will be green shoots.
Through your tears you will see rainbows of glory
for I make all things new.

I will melt your bones

that dried to stone under the torturing sun
and you will be renewed.
I pour out my healing and your soul draws it in.
I am refreshment and re-creation and
my touch is soft on your open palms.

I will wash away all the dust of dispiritment,
baptise your feet and hands, bless your clouded face.
There will be rejoicing and you will learn to smile again.

 

The Legacy of the Socks

It’s strange how the smallest action, even one that seems quite personal to ourselves, can have such an unexpected impact.

An elderly neighbour of mine had a thing about his feet.  It was of no interest or concern to anyone else, but  he was almost obsessive about keeping his feet clean.  Perhaps it was a side effect of having worn army boots for many years.  Apart from washing his feet every day – I’ve never seen such pink plump feet on anyone other than a baby – he was paranoiac about fresh socks, to the extent that he wouldn’t wash his socks alongside anything else: they had to go in the washing machine by themselves. 

So it came as no surprise  really, to find when he died, that he had 25 pairs of brand new socks that were still in their packets, plus another 18 pairs that were as good as new.

It seemed such a waste to throw them away.  Luckily the Salvation Army soup kitchen in Bournemouth was only too grateful to have them, as every night they would have homeless and poor people turn up without socks or other basic clothing.   On occasion, the organisers had removed their own socks and given them out.  Now  43 of the local homeless benefitted unexpectedly from the passion of one stranger.

If something as trivial and personal as a hygiene obsession can have such unexpected effects, what about our everyday words and actions?  Our thoughts and intentions?  Often we don’t see the impact that these create, whether it’s holding a door open for a young woman struggling with a pushchair; or being rude to a traffic warden.  Our smallest action sends ripples out into the world, for better or worse.  No wonder it is said that God sees even a sparrow fall.  To me, that means no action goes unnoticed, each carries its own energy out into the world at large.  Love, like God, is not blind but all-seeing.  We may be blind to what we do but love is not: Love sees the ripples before the stone is cast.