Singing in the Rain

In days of relative darkness, when shadows envelope everything, we should seek the light that is reflected and refracted in our neighbors.

As an Englishman, I have a tendency towards sun-worship. There’s a very good reason for this. England is a gloomy country in terms of the weather. It rains a lot, and even when it’s not raining, it’s usually cloudy. Sunny days are relatively rare and are greeted with euphoric abandon by the natives. My wife, a native of southern California, was amused, during the brief period that she lived in England following our marriage, to see the way that the English stripped off the moment the sun came out, exposing as much of their bodies as decency permitted, and often more than decency permitted.

These days, having left England twenty years ago, I bask in the sun most of the time. South Carolina is rarely gloomy, though there’s enough rain to keep the landscape lusciously green. Today, however, it’s raining, and yesterday was the same. As I look up, there’s not even a glimpse of a silver lining. Gloom prevails and there’s no immediate prospect of the faintest gleam penetrating the drizzle-dreary gloaming.

It is tempting on such a sunless day to see the dreariness metaphorically. Isn’t the absence of light and warmth a metaphor for the cold and heartless world in which we live, a world in which the shadows prevail and in which the light of goodness and truth is eclipsed? At such times, seeing ourselves as small and powerless, we would be well-advised to look up and proclaim, with Samwise Gamgee, that above all shadows rides the sun. The sun is still there, even if we can’t see it, and the light by which we see, even when its dim and diminished, has its source in that very same sun. Once we see the very gloom itself in this light and by this light, the gloom itself becomes beautiful. Even the drizzly dreariness shines forth the grandeur of God.

Basking in this light of faith and hope, it is easy to step out into the rain and sing its praises, as Chesterton did in his essay “The Romantic in the Rain”. We should enjoy the rain, says Chesterton, as the trees enjoy it. “[T]he trees rave and reel to and fro like drunken giants; they clash boughs as revellers clash cups; they roar undying thirst and howl the health of the world.” It’s as though the trees are alive and singing. “All around me as I write is a noise of Nature drinking; and Nature makes a noise when she is drinking, being by no means refined. If I count it Christian mercy to give a cup of cold water to a sufferer, shall I complain of these multitudinous cups of water handed round to all living things; a cup of water for every shrub; a cup of water for every weed?” Seen in this Franciscan light, it seems almost blasphemous to curse the weather and bemoan the apparent absence of the sun.

Then, with unabashed abandonment which will remind some of us of Gene Kelly, Chesterton beseeches us to cast away our umbrellas as artificial accretions and devilish technological gadgets. “Shut up, an umbrella is an unmanageable walking stick,” he tells us; “open it is an inadequate tent.” Why, he wonders, would we want to pretend to be “a walking pavilion”. Although I can imagine habitual umbrella-users rolling their eyes disdainfully, I will confess that this one observation changed my life. Having read these words as a young man, many moons ago, I cast away the very thought of using an umbrella and have avoided their use ever since. Furthermore, the umbrella served thereafter as a symbol of all unnecessary technology, this seemingly trivial passage by Chesterton turning me into a lifelong techno-minimalist.

If this all seems very flippant, let’s return to the deeper metaphorical question. When the light is obscured by shadows and the direct light of the sun appears to be absent, should we despair or become despondent? Heaven forbid. In days of relative darkness, when the shadows envelope everything, we should seek the light that is reflected and refracted in our neighbors, in the creatures that surround us. This, says Chesterton, is “one of the real beauties of rainy weather, that while the amount of original and direct light is commonly lessened, the number of things that reflect light is unquestionably increased. There is less sunshine; but there are more shiny things; such beautifully shiny things as pools and puddles and mackintoshes. It is like moving in a world of mirrors.”

This reflection on reflection itself is an endeavor by Chesterton to get us to see things from a new angle so that we can see them afresh, and perhaps see them as they really are for the first time. It is necessary, he reminds us, to stand on our heads if we want to see something that we’ve ceased to see because it has become too familiar. In this sense, irrespective of whether familiarity breeds contempt, it can certainly breed blindness. We cease to see the beauty in a thing because we are taking it for granted.

With respect to the romantic in the rain, or more correctly the mystic in the rain, Chesterton reminds us that seeing everything reflected in a puddle is an opportunity to stand on our heads:

[W]herever trees and towns hang head downwards in the pygmy puddle, the sense of Celestial topsy-turvydom is the same. The bright, wet, dazzling confusion of shape and shadow, of reality and reflection, will appeal strongly to any one with the transcendental instinct about this dreamy and dual life of ours. It will always give a man the strange sense of looking down at the skies.

It’s still raining, and the gloom prevails. The sun cannot be seen but it’s still there, riding its perennial course above all shadows. As for the rain which continues to fall, I can imagine it signifying the tears of God on a world of light-eclipsing darkness, but it also signifies the water of life with which the One who reigns rains down blessings, baptizing his creatures with new life.

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The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.