I’m sitting here watching the sky pour down a heavy offering of rain.  I need to be running out to handle a bit of work and some errands, but I’m thinking I’ll wait until this stops.

Looking down at the cabana pool, I watch folks scurry to huddle beneath a patio umbrella to get out of the wet.  I have to laugh.  There’s just no sense in a bunch of already wet-from-swimming people running to get out of the rain.

Like a quick clap of thunder, my mind turned to the topic of suffering.  Can’t say I was particularly thinking about that at any point this morning.  Not sure why it came up… I’m guessing because it needed to go here.  As I watched the rain fall, watched other humans react to getting rained upon, I started to understand the little voice speaking within me.

While there are certainly more than four approaches to how a Witch can face suffering, pain, or fearful situations, I believe I can safely say that most other options are variations of these.

STAY INSIDE. That’s what I did this morning as I watched the heavens drop buckets.  When the pain is raining down in sheets, you can choose to avoid situations where you know it’s going to hurt.  It’s a valid approach for situations, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a standard life path.  You can choose to do this only in certain areas.  For example, this is my current approach to dating.  I refrain.  I have too many personal issues to work through for myself relating to how I feel about who I am and my lack of positive attitude about partnership (just where I’m involved) to feel I would be a good partner to anyone.  I choose to refrain in a very conscious way.  Staying inside means you might also miss opportunities for other things, though.  So this needs to be taken into account.

GRAB YOUR UMBRELLA.  You can choose to shield yourself from the worst of it.  This tends to be the good middle ground.  Keeps you mobile, keeps you active, lets you grab opportunities, but the worst can run off of your shield.  Of course, when you have that umbrella up and open, you lose 1/4th of your surrounding vision.  Sadly, the 1/4th that you lose is the segment looking heaven-ward, upward, towards the ‘Higher’ realms if you’ll allow the analogy.  Shielding yourself from any experience can limit some vital input through your field of “vision”.  It does, however, keep you dry and able to play well with others and do things beyond the rain encounter.

COMMIT TO GETTING WET. One less popular but surefire way to dealing with suffering or pain is to just allow it to take over and soak you through to the skin.  You can raise your face upwards, open yourself, let the moment overtake you.  You tend to be mostly in the moment, with full range of vision and experience.  However, you also tend to end up in a condition that most people don’t want riding in their cars along a shared journey — dripping, shivering, cold, and needing care and attention.  If you make plans to do it, though, it can be liberating and less instrusive if not actually productive.  As I watch my daughter dance in the rain every once and a while, I can’t help but believe that if we occasionally choose to open and dance our way through our pain without any thought as to who might think we’re crazy or who might get upset at us for crying, soaking through, squishing as we walk, we would all be much healthier.

RELEASE CARING ABOUT GETTING WET. This may not seem as an obvious option to many, so that’s why I’m putting it out there.  When dealing with pain and suffering, one way to handle the situation is to stop worrying about how to handle it.  Stop being afraid of it and staying inside.  Stop being guarded so much with concerns about “staying dry”.  Don’t go off the deep end and wallow every time.  Just, literally, change your outlook about rain (ie. pain and suffering).  It happens.  You’re going to get a little wet anytime you venture into the wide open spaces of the world.  Your hair might get a little messed up — karma does not require you to arrive with perfect hair.  You may step in a puddle — consider it a healing foot bath, cleansing you for your next step.  Go with the flow, get to shelter when you can, but don’t stress over remaining at the extremes of dry or soaked.  Some of the happiest people I’ve seen in the “rain of pain” are those that shoulder it with the same non-chalance as sunshine.

In closing…

Pain and suffering are difficult things to explain.  Our logical minds want to connect the dots and apply some logical order to the concepts of why bad things happen and why people hurt.  I can understand why:  we want to limit these things from repeating if possible, to make life as joyous as possible.  Regardless of our best attempts to circumvent pain and suffering, they happen.

Pain and suffering can come on as a gentle rain of memory.  They can come on with the devastating ferocity of a summer storm from seemingly nowhere.  They can creep up on us and we feel them coming, just as a farmer can taste the rain in the air.  The rains can be short bursts or gentle mists or deluges.  But they come.  They nourish us, reminding us that there are things we need that we cannot control, things that feed our growth and without which we would simply die.  And just like the rain, pain and suffering do not necessarily fall evenly for all people.  Some receive more than others.

My daughter once asked me why it had to rain.  I told her it’s because the earth and everyone on it needs the water.  But really, you could go to the lake and get water.  I think I’m going to have to revise my answer.  We also need the EXPERIENCE of rain.

Just remember, it can’t rain all the time.  As you respond to the areas of pain and suffering in your life, know that there is a blue sky beyond the clouds, constant and waiting.  Let the storm pass, face it as you choose, and honor it for helping you grow.

Photo by Hansol K (via Flickr).