My relationship with rain has changed recently. I now live in a house whose roof has a layer of a rubber-like membrane, then a thick layer of foam insulation, and then about two inches of wood, so it works like a drum. I no longer need to look out the window to discern whether it is raining. I hear the rain begin with sprinkles and turn to big drops. I hear the swell and ebb of a storm, and after the rain stops falling from the sky, I hear drops falling from the two big oak trees that shelter the house.

I learned that I have to choose how to react to this sound. If I'm trying to hear something else -- someone talking, the TV -- I have to ask the person to talk more loudly or hit the Pause button and wait. If I'm sleeping, it wakes me up, and ear plugs muffle but don't cancel the sound. Sometimes I feel annoyed, and I have a choice of whether or not to let that
annoyance become a full-fledged bird of anger. Usually, I stop what I'm doing for a moment and listen and think about everything outside my house that is also experiencing this rainfall -- the trees and the squirrels and the mushrooms and such. There isn't much I can do about it, so I just let it be. This makes me think of a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh that
applies to this and is also useful in meeting for worship: You can choose what to focus on, and therefore what to be. You can choose to be your in-breath and out-breath.

You can choose to listen with your whole being to the sound of the rain or the wind, and in some way to be one with the rain or the wind. Listening to sounds in this way can be very joyful. When you are in touch with these refreshing and healing elements, you are being, and not thinking.

- Marie Lindsay for the Clerks Team.