Answering the Diggity (or, Soaked to the Bone)

Fall is the best time of year. I felt this when I lived up north. I loved seeing all the trees burst into fiery color, waking to see the frost on the ground, crunching through fallen leaves. My grandmother tells me fall is still proceeding in exactly this same way on this very day, despite my absence. I still love the fall in the south, even though it’s not quite as vivid in its display. It is no less obvious to notice, however. The heat finally breaks, the bustle of the school year—and Friday night football—returns to full swing, and the rains return.
Fall is like the sunset. It is the Golden Hour. It is the time when everything seems clear. The tough questions seem to come so easily: Are we doing things right? Are we missing out on the important things? Is this the best way to live? And the hard answers are swift and sure in following: It would be better to work less, be involved in less. It would be better to spend more time growing food, cooking food, sharing together over food, and using food to fuel our bodies in rigorous work and play. It might even force us to eat that which is good, and not that which is processed and microwaved. It would be better to seek the forgotten places, to live where few tread. Fall is so beautiful, it makes everything seem more real. And the things that are phoney… well you just want to shed them like cumbersome foliage and walk away.
But the sun slips below the horizon. The last golden leaves fall to the ground and are trampled into fertilizer. The clarity of fall fades away. Was it the Apostle Paul or John Mayer who said that clarity can’t last? I guess it was both of them. John in his song by that title, Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. Right now we see through a glass darkly, but true and lasting clarity is yet ahead.
But last night, I encountered fall. How often do you encounter the seasons? When was the last time you walked barefoot? When was the last time you let yourself be drenched by the rain? In our society of comfortable homes, attached garages, hermetically sealed automobiles, and bountiful parking, it’s actually hard to get more than a few sprinkles on your shoulders. We let our connection to vital, living things pass away and replace them with dead, hard, metallic things, and we wonder why we feel less alive. The shells we surround ourselves with insulate us from the real.
Standing in a blocked-off street, surrounded by floats and children, there is little to do but encounter the weather. In the middle (at the very beginning, actually) of Aydan’s school parade, we were caught in a torrential downpour. Like Andy Dufresne emerging from Shawshank Prison, I could only look to the sky, hold my hands up and smile. We hid from the storm for a moment or two, but then Aydan and I gleefully rain into the rain and began the mile-or-so trip back home. It was one of those rare and beautiful times when you truly enjoy everything about a moment. All we did was relish each other and the environment we were in. We called to each other to come splash in the gigantic puddles we had found. We marched and stomped, spraying water all around. And each drop seemed to rinse away some of the fog and confusion. I was saturated in reality. This was true. This was beautiful. I thanked God, who sends his rain on the righteous and the wrong, for soaking me in such an important moment.