I want some rain. I'm tired of this endless summer in the middle of January. The redwood forest wants some rain too. It has been waiting for months for a healthy rain. I'm desperate about rain because without rain there is no future and for me, having no future at all is the very heart of desperation. If I can't look forward to something, it's just depressing. If the future is meadows of wildflowers then I have something to look forward to and even if the future is a deluge, I still have something to look forward to.
But at last there is some hope. The weather forecast guaranteed rain and I believed it so I cleaned the rain gutters. That just goes to show how desperate I've been because I wasn't thinking very well about what I was doing and the rain never came. That must have been caused by cleaning the gutters. Everyone knows that. I'm just too desperate to think straight.
Maybe I should have washed the car to compensate for the effect of cleaning the gutters. It's the idea of reverse psychology on the weather. If the high tech weather forecasts don't bring rain and washing the car doesn't work, I can try planning a garden party, or maybe try doing a rain dance with praying and pleading and such.
And maybe God hears my prayers and embarrassing whining and watches me hoofing the dry dirt and has sympathy for me, but He doesn't know any better than I do about how to bring the rain. I would be so disappointed to find out that He isn't the Rainmaker either, but He is compassionate so He goes out to His driveway and washes His car. He uses reverse psychology on Mother Nature too, but doesn't let on. I can just imagine Him washing His car with some gigantic jiffy car wash wand He found in a garage sale after the Flood. You remember, the Flood that Noah got away from with all the animals? Noah probably didn't live in New Orleans back then.
I don't know if His car washing really brings rain either but last night's downpour left the forest clean and sparkling with drops of water on the tips of the redwood fronds, and the tree trunks are dark, soaked poles reaching up through the ground fog and occasional rays of sun. When you live in a redwood forest, the rain comes from the forest and not the sky. That's because the forest is a couple hundred feet high and we lowly humans live at the bottom of these tall trees. Mostly all you see when you look up is endless trees. There isn't much sky to be seen. The forest makes the rain and drinks in the rain. We humans get soaked in the splashing drops, something like getting caught by His hose and car wash wand.
But when it comes to God washing His car, maybe He doesn't really have the Mercedes Benz that Janis Joplin asked Him for. Maybe He drives something else that doesn't have the high maintenance of engine check lights and better-than-your-Porche status (and cleaner than your Porche, too). Maybe He drives a redwood forest and He did wash it last night and these dripping woods are the rain that quenches my hope for a future of wildflowers and the glee of squirting my wife with the car wash wand on hot summer afternoons.
I kind of imagine I've got a little inside deal with Him because I don't drive a redwood forest to the gym (they get horrible gas mileage, but who cares when you're God) and I don't mind driving the muddy disaster that my car becomes when I wash it in our dirt road in July. Thats when there usually is an unseasonable rainstorm that destroys our carefully planned midsummer deck party and also destroys my fresh car wash job. He's standing above His forest with His biblical-sized car wash wand giggling and I have the only muddy car in the gym parking lot.
I don't care, though. It's part of the sacrifice I have to make for the joy of a meadow of wildflowers and the pristine glow of a clean redwood forest and besides, no one would recognize me in a clean car.
