Sunshine and Rain

Good morning!  

Red Sky at night, sailor's delight...that sky up there is part of my Glorification of Fairway Court Series. We don't live on a beautiful or distinguished street, but quite often, at sunset, God paints  a huge beautiful panorama over our heads if we will but look at it.

This morning in Mutts, my favorite comic, the artist is continuing with this week's theme of "Sun Showers."   Some times when it's raining,   the sun comes out.  Patrick McDonnell, the artist of Mutts, calls this Sun Showers, a beautiful phrase.

My grandmother used to say, when that phenomenon appeared: "The Devil's beating his wife."  We'd say, "What?" and she'd reiterate: "Yes, that's what they say. The Devil's beating his wife."  That was my first remembered introduction to the "They" of life, who said so much in when I was young, less now perhaps.

I didn't like it that that beauty, the sparkling falling drops of rain in sunshine, was significant of so ugly a vision.  How, at four, did I know what a beating was, anyway? The Devil, yes, I knew from my Bible Story book, where he appeared in a black and white line drawing looking like a lizard and certainly bad.  But why such a bad thing should be associated with such beauty? I found it troubling.

Now I know that there are many grumps in life who, unconsciously surely,  like to translate simple joys into negative pictures.  Let's not be that way, and let's not tell our children things like that in the spirit of truth. They believe you.

Akira Kurosawa's film, "Dreams," starts with an unforgettable vision. The whole movie is haunting, being just a series of dreams he's had throughout his life which he chose to make into a film.  The first one is about a little boy looking at a sun shower...His mother tells him,  "These are the times when the foxes have their weddings."  She warns him not to go out into the woods, but of course he goes. There deep in the woods he has a glimpse of a foxes' wedding...gorgeous and bizarre ritual as it is...he is in danger of course....he runs back towards home.

Isn't that a beautiful concept?  Unsettling, yes, but so provocative to introspection to the five-year-old inside us.  It would be interesting to see what different  associations other cultures have made with the sunshine and shower weather phenomenon, wouldn't it?  YAZZYBEL