A soft, spring rain

A soft spring rain is falling outside. I love rain in any form (unless it is part or a destructive hurricane) and especially the kind of soft Spring rain that is falling now.

Rain always makes me reflective. It makes me ponder stuff I normally don't--not because I don't want to but because pondering will get you into trouble on a sunny, 70's kind of time.

Here's what I'm pondering right now with the soft Spring rain falling: Life is, by it's very nature and essentially, empty and meaningless.

Life comes at us like the weather--it just comes and we can't determine it in any way that would matter. Empty and meaningless....

Today, the 9/11 museum was dedicated, The president and most folks who we assume matter about it all were there. What happened on 9/ll was like the weather--empty and meaningless--it just happened.

9/11 seems an odd thing to have a museum dedicated to, on one level. Just like Holocaust museums and the Quinnipiac University museum in Hamden dedicated to the Irish Hunger. Go figure....

But it makes my point for me: 9/ll, the Holocaust and the Irish Hunger simply happened. Like tonight's rain. But we human beings are "meaning" creating machines. There is no such thing out in the universe called 'significance'. You can't bring me a cup of 'significance' the way you can bring me a cup of coffee or water. You can't bring me a bag full of 'meaning' from anywhere.

Significance and Meaning is what we human beings make up about the weather, about a soft Spring rain.

I make up that Spring rain makes me ponder. All the rain is doing is falling. I decided that 'pondering' was caused by it.

I know I'm not making a lot of sense--because 'making a lot of sense' is what we human beings made up to deal with the emptiness and meaninglessness of life.

All I want to say about 'emptiness and meaninglessness' and 'making sense' is this: we would be a lot better off if we noticed the distinction between 'what happened' (a soft spring rain) and what we 'said about what happened' ('rain makes me ponder things....').

It would make us acknowledge that whatever 'meaning' there is to life and time and things and events, is what we 'made up' about 'what happened'.

That might just free us, I think, to 'make up' MEANING in a different way--a way that brought into being compassion more than conflict, love more than hate, openness more than bigotry, acceptance more than judgment, calmness more than anger, wonder more than fear, hope more than anything....

That's just the pondering that I know the rain didn't cause but I'm glad I 'made up' that the rain did cause it so I could ponder it.....