The story
There once was a woman who feared rain above all things. She was so afraid that she spent all her money on a sturdy umbrella and carried it with her whenever she went outdoors, no matter the weather. People stared as she passed them, wondering why anyone would want an umbrella on such a fine day. Sometimes they would invite her to put away the umbrella and join them as they soaked in the sun, but the woman only smiled and shook her head. Always best to be prepared, she would remind herself, it could rain at any moment, and then they would bless my foresight.
On days that it did rain the woman would gather her courage, put on thick clothing, and walk with her umbrella all through the streets of the town where she lived, looking for anyone caught out unprepared. When she saw someone, she would call to them, “Quick! Under my umbrella before you get any wetter!”
Sometimes the person in the rain was glad of her offered shelter, and sometimes they declined, saying that they liked the feel of the rain on their skin, just as they liked the sunshine. The woman did not understand how anyone could enjoy rain. She had never felt either rain or sun, for she never went out without a shield between herself and the sky. Although she worried about the poor souls who did not seem to realize how reckless they were being, she could do no more than provide sanctuary and let others choose to accept it or not. And so, she did; season after season, growing paler and more fragile with each passing year. Gradually, it became very hard for the woman to go out, especially when it rained, but she made herself do it. If I don’t go out, she told herself, some poor soul might die from exposure, and then I would never forgive myself. Out she would go, walking more slowly and traversing fewer streets each time, wondering, tiredly, as she watched the irresponsible teach their children to jump in puddles, if any of them understood or appreciated how much she sacrificed to keep them safe.
Finally, a day came when she felt the chill in her very bones. If I go out today, she thought, the rain will kill me. But how can I stay dry and warm when so many are suffering outside my door? Out she went, umbrella gripped grimly in already numb hands. Not a dozen paces from her house she stumbled, the mud and wind too much for her weakened legs. The woman cried out as she fell, reaching towards a few neighbors nearby, who were all too far away to catch her. As she struck the muddy ground, the woman’s precious umbrella was knocked from her white hand, and the shock of the cold wetness drove the breath from her body. Dazed, she lay still, feeling the steady onslaught of the rain from above and below, as her neighbors gathered around her.
“Now do you see?” she whispered to them, “all these years I tried to tell you. Rain is a deadly thing.”
The Deconstruction
There is a porch swing on our patio facing my garden. Made of thin wooden slats hung from a frame on chains, it rests just outside our window. The indoor cat sometimes sits in that window, watching the girls and me outside and wishing we were kind enough people to bring him out with us. The outdoor cat sometimes climbs the swing’s frame and meows at me inside, wishing I was a kind enough person to let him in. Evidence would suggest that I am not, but they keep trying. Guilt is a cat’s biggest weapon. That, and persistence. I find it interesting that I think this while writing about rain and umbrellas.
It is a nice day, for March in Ohio. I sit in this swing on nice days to write, but I am hesitating this time, staring instead at my garden. At this time of year, the garden is still sleeping under the blanket of maple leaf mulch I spread over the beds last fall. There are a few pinecones mixed in from our majestic Eastern White Pine by the pond, a tree I greet as “old friend” when I cut needles for tea. It was a bonanza year for pinecones, we couldn’t get away from them (lucky squirrels), but they don’t belong in my garden. Soon I will burrow through the leaves like a squirrel myself, seeking, not nuts, but the good soil resting beneath the mulch. I will shape it around the seedlings I have sprouted in my kitchen window, or plant seeds there with an unconscious prayer. This is the essence of faith: to place something so fragile with so much potential into an environment that cannot be fully controlled, and believe that it will flourish and create a more beautiful world. As I am both a mother and a gardener, this is my daily practice. I, like my plants and my children, need sun, and rain, and soil. In another month it will be time to entrust my seedlings to the care of the earth, the best of all mothers, and watch them grow. For their first weeks I will drape them with a row cover, a length of white gauze to mute the intensity of the sun and give the sheltered plants time to adjust to the uncontrolled climate of the world, but they can’t stay under it forever. The row cover brings its own complications as well. Heavy rain can drench the porous gauze, flattening it—and the seedlings—against the ground. Usually not fatal, it isn’t easy for the baby plants to get back up. Also, the cat is in love with my row cover. He thinks I put it out there just for him to bat at, lie on, and hide under. As he is the size of about four chihuahuas, that can be a problem, but at least the seedlings won’t get sun scorched in their first weeks. The other alternative is to “harden” the plants off by gradually increasing their exposure to the sun over the period of about a week. I am neither organized enough nor disciplined enough not to forget the plants and overexpose them on the very first day (or maybe the second), so row cover it is, cats and all. But these are not the thoughts I have come here to process.
I was in bed last week, supposed to be doing my pre-sleep neck stretches, but too caught up in uncertainty and frustration to do anything but sit. It was from that emotional labor that the umbrella story came into being, flowering fully formed in my mind the way pieces sometimes do for me when I am processing intense emotion. I knew that I was trying to say something important about the ways I have changed as a person, and I knew why. For the past year and a half, my family and I have been regularly attending a church, something we have not done with such consistency for most of our married life. During that time I went from excited about reconnecting with my childhood Christian identity and actually being part of a church community in a big way; to fighting for that place and that feeling as I encountered considerable pushback from a very controlling pastor; to devastation as I found myself skillfully maneuvered away from the “inside” of any church group or ministry, both because the leadership of the church felt that my theology was dangerous (although, what that has to do with serving meals I do not understand), and because I was unwilling to let said pastor micromanage my participation in, and service to, the church; and finally to a resigned acceptance of the fact that I will never again be accepted within most Christian circles because I’m just too weird, theologically speaking, and no longer willing to hide myself in order to fit in. No matter how much Christians talk about God being all-loving and good, there is always a (mostly unspoken) IF in that statement. God will accept you, IF you repent your sins and become better. God will protect and prosper you, IF you spend your time and money doing his work. God will always be there for you, IF you turn over all control of your life to him. God will take you to heaven to spend eternity with him after you die, IF you accept that Jesus was murdered to pay the cost of your horrible sins, and that doing so is the ONLY way to not suffer eternally in the afterlife. God will entirely separate himself from you, removing all protection and blessing, IF YOU DON’T.
Deny the “if,” or even point it out, and you become a pariah. What is Christianity without hell? As one preacher from a nearby church (not ours) put it, if there are no eternal consequences for life, we could all go play golf on Sunday mornings. That was, I might add, the last time we attended that particular church. Personally, I see no point in the game of golf, accept fresh air and exercise, but I would definitely much rather heft a bag of clubs and hit the green than sit through a sermon given by someone so disillusioned with God. Christians like him are, thankfully, not the norm. Most of the people I have known in my life are Christians, and for nearly all of them, their faith is the very oxygen of existence. My point here is NOT to make that often beautiful way of living into something sad and desperate, like the woman with her umbrella. My point is that it is not the only way to be.
I stare at the soft, pressed paper pages of the journal into which I have entrusted the umbrella story, rereading the words again and again. There is a subtle thrumming of energy coursing through me, which is the way my Deep Self sends me messages. I am very close to realizing something that will be important for me moving on, but I have to stay in this tension to reach it. I have to see this through. Not to sound dramatic, but for the past month and a half I have been stuck in an emotional vortex I can only describe as a crisis of identity. At the same time as I entered the resigned stage of processing what my husband and I refer to as, “the church drama,” two friends from church, who were also feeling like outsiders, and I, decided to form our own Bible study. We started reading through a book that describes how to experience the love of God (through a Christian perspective) when you have suffered deep rejection in your life…a choice of reading material that was not intentional, but the irony is not lost on us (or my husband, he thought it was kind of funny). We have also been reading through 1 John, a book even those with misgivings about the Bible can sometimes connect with, as I am discovering, because of the great love John experienced from Jesus and the value he placed on that love. God is love. No matter what else I believe or don’t believe the important thing to remember is that where love is there is God. And there is love in the friendship I am building with these women, love that is sometimes hesitant as we are working through our individual past traumas and learning to trust and connect, but love that is growing. It is a process that has been both deeply challenging and deeply healing for all of us. The true irony of the experience, however, was realizing that I needed both the rejection of church leaders, and then the safe space created by three women trying to figure out how to do life together despite our differences, for me to finally step away from my Christian identity completely. No more umbrellas, no row cover, just sun and rain. Doing so was even more terrifying than getting married. Who am I, if I do not belong in “the family of God,” with “my name written in the book of life”? I feel small and fragile, so very exposed, and unqualified to make such a decision. How odd to think that I’m unqualified…who could possibly be more qualified than I am to design a faith that fits my life and values? And yet, mistrust of self is deeply ingrained in me. Simply put, until I was twenty-two years old and married, I had no idea that I had any worth whatsoever outside of service and obedience.
The zinging intensifies, I am getting closer.
Oh.
I left the story unfinished because the answer is in the way I would have finished it ten or fifteen years ago, and the way I would finish it now. As a very young adult I would have ended the story like this:
~*~
The woman’s neighbors huddled with her under the umbrella that one of them had retrieved for her, many gentle hands lifting her out of the mud and bearing her back into the warmth of her house. Wrapped in blankets and offered tea by her own fire, the woman gazed gratefully into the faces of those she had worked so long to reach, and was content knowing that she would never again have to go out in the rain.
~*~
There is a tragic beauty in that ending. The woman’s sacrifice paid off, and at least she could live out the rest of her life less lonely. Ten times in two sentences I refer to her, for she has, by giving her last ounce of strength and effort, earned the right to at last be taken care of. If I had made different choices in my early adulthood, I might have become the umbrella woman. Dear God, THAT is a terrifying thought. There is uncertainty in living uncovered, but also excitement, as I am retraining the old fear responses from years of being told I must, at all costs, remain separate from this world, for there is nothing but pain here for me. There is sometimes pain, but there is more beauty. I can enjoy the world as it was created to be enjoyed when I’m not afraid of it, and I can enjoy the company of people more when connections are not clouded with the internal expectation that I must save them, or we must keep each other accountable to Living Rightly. I spent the last decade shedding layers of guilt, then walking in the rain. I have found it to be a uniquely sensual experience. Eventually I will die, but it is unlikely to be from exposure. I trust the sun to come out.
To Be Born Again
“Here, let me help you,” the first neighbor to reach the woman said, strong hands lifting the woman from the mud and steadying her on her feet. The woman gripped the neighbor’s arms with trembling fingers.
“My…my umbrella!” she gasped, searching with frantic eyes to see where it had blown to.
“It’s alright,” the neighbor said, and together they began making their way back to the woman’s house. Inside and wearing dry clothes, the woman stared out at the rain while her neighbor made tea for them both. I thought it would kill me. I was so sure, the woman thought to herself, but instead I feel…awake. I feel more alive than I have in years. It’s strange.
“Not so strange,” replied her neighbor, handing the woman a cup of steaming spiced tea. “That’s the thing about life, you know? You have to really experience it to feel like you’re alive. Otherwise, you’re never quite sure.”
“Thank you,” the woman replied, accepting the cup, and wondering if she had spoken her thoughts aloud without meaning to or…or, what? Had she been living next door to an angel and never known it because the angel enjoyed walking in the rain?
Hesitantly, she answered her neighbor’s warm smile with one of her own. The neighbor glanced past her through the window, and the smile broadened.
“Ah,” her neighbor said, “the rain is stopping and the sun is coming out. It is perfect weather for a rainbow.”
“What is a rainbow?” the woman asked, uncertainly, “it sounds dangerous.”
The neighbor’s smile softened, and she held out a hand to the woman.
“Why don’t we go see?” she said.
And, to the woman’s surprise, she found herself accepting it.
<3