"Rain falls on the just and unjust alike." This biblical phrase has been interpreted in many ways, but it leads me to think of rain and chance, of just how the natural laws have been made to mirror the moral - or the reverse, depending on your beliefs.
I grew up in Connecticut, and as children we saw thunderstorms as a great event. They would happen on hot days, and regardless of the lightening, we would run out in the rain like playful dogs to cool off. It was not just that we had a chance to cool off, but that such events were relatively rare. The Northeast did not have conditions for thunderstorms that often. The proximity to the cool North Atlantic kept highs lower and lows higher, and instead of those sudden downpours, we usually got long periods of rain from moisture off the ocean that could last for days, which were hardly inspiring.
Things here in my Wisconsin neighborhood are different. We get the extremes from the northern plains, and thunderstorms are the norm in summer. We have been hit by lightening at least three times in the past ten years, with one strike blowing up a large tree just outside our south windows, burning out TVs and appliances within the house while spreading shards and splinters of the tree for a hundred yards or more. Our dog was present then, and to this day, she becomes terrified when we have thunder, which is about once a week. We are a thunder and lightening and tornado state.
There's something peculiar about that. It is usual, during late summer, to find the huge corn fields across the street from oiur house doing just fine, while a drive 10 miles to the north will find the corn plants' leaves shriveled against the onslaught of heat and drought. Thunderstorms are often only local. We might get an inch or more of rain, and a nearby town next to nothing. It is frustrating to look at the meteorological rain reports to find that they get it wrong so often. Of course, they don't; the official rain gauge for area is ten miles away, more than enough to explain the great differences.
And yet, over the course of a summer - and certainly over the course of several summers - the rain totals add up even. This would not happen were we in great mountains, but here in the open plains and small glens, it all works out according to the biblical scripture: in the long run, the rain falls on the guys around us equally; on the people from Cottage Grove just as on those from Sullivan.
It's amazing, really, but this is how chance works. Flip a coin ten times and it might be 8 heads and 2 tails; but flip it 1,000 times and it will come out just about equally. We take this for granted, but no farmer takes his rain for granted. We ourselves curse our bad luck when we get nothing and Watertown, 20 miles away, gets an inch. But we should be content - it will all equal out in the end.
The laws of our universe are not by chance. Some may think so, but how does everything fit together so well by chance? But, you say, the rain does - but that is not the whole story. The very laws of chance were not made by chance. It was how things were made - that everything evens out in the end. It could have been different in many, many ways, but this is how it is. What, out of an infinite amount of possibilities, are the odds?
In social science, we speculate that moral laws and mythologies were made according to observations of nature. Zeus the lightening-bolt hurler seems to prove that. But to me, overall, things work in reverse. The spiritual realm is reflected in nature, and in one of these reflections, we get the "law of chance." We all have equal access to the spiritual in the long run. We can all have the same luck growing our corn or our lawns as the next guy in the same general environment. In the long run, our success is measured not on the gifts of luck, but on what we do with what we have. So it is with the rain, even as it comes down unevenly from week to week. And so it is with enlightenment. We all get the same amount of spiritual rain in the end, and it is only our willingness to use it that makes the difference.
Which reminds me: what with all the ran recently, its over-time to weed the garden, for rain alone will not make a good crop. Only constant care will. FK
I grew up in Connecticut, and as children we saw thunderstorms as a great event. They would happen on hot days, and regardless of the lightening, we would run out in the rain like playful dogs to cool off. It was not just that we had a chance to cool off, but that such events were relatively rare. The Northeast did not have conditions for thunderstorms that often. The proximity to the cool North Atlantic kept highs lower and lows higher, and instead of those sudden downpours, we usually got long periods of rain from moisture off the ocean that could last for days, which were hardly inspiring.
Things here in my Wisconsin neighborhood are different. We get the extremes from the northern plains, and thunderstorms are the norm in summer. We have been hit by lightening at least three times in the past ten years, with one strike blowing up a large tree just outside our south windows, burning out TVs and appliances within the house while spreading shards and splinters of the tree for a hundred yards or more. Our dog was present then, and to this day, she becomes terrified when we have thunder, which is about once a week. We are a thunder and lightening and tornado state.
There's something peculiar about that. It is usual, during late summer, to find the huge corn fields across the street from oiur house doing just fine, while a drive 10 miles to the north will find the corn plants' leaves shriveled against the onslaught of heat and drought. Thunderstorms are often only local. We might get an inch or more of rain, and a nearby town next to nothing. It is frustrating to look at the meteorological rain reports to find that they get it wrong so often. Of course, they don't; the official rain gauge for area is ten miles away, more than enough to explain the great differences.
And yet, over the course of a summer - and certainly over the course of several summers - the rain totals add up even. This would not happen were we in great mountains, but here in the open plains and small glens, it all works out according to the biblical scripture: in the long run, the rain falls on the guys around us equally; on the people from Cottage Grove just as on those from Sullivan.
It's amazing, really, but this is how chance works. Flip a coin ten times and it might be 8 heads and 2 tails; but flip it 1,000 times and it will come out just about equally. We take this for granted, but no farmer takes his rain for granted. We ourselves curse our bad luck when we get nothing and Watertown, 20 miles away, gets an inch. But we should be content - it will all equal out in the end.
The laws of our universe are not by chance. Some may think so, but how does everything fit together so well by chance? But, you say, the rain does - but that is not the whole story. The very laws of chance were not made by chance. It was how things were made - that everything evens out in the end. It could have been different in many, many ways, but this is how it is. What, out of an infinite amount of possibilities, are the odds?
In social science, we speculate that moral laws and mythologies were made according to observations of nature. Zeus the lightening-bolt hurler seems to prove that. But to me, overall, things work in reverse. The spiritual realm is reflected in nature, and in one of these reflections, we get the "law of chance." We all have equal access to the spiritual in the long run. We can all have the same luck growing our corn or our lawns as the next guy in the same general environment. In the long run, our success is measured not on the gifts of luck, but on what we do with what we have. So it is with the rain, even as it comes down unevenly from week to week. And so it is with enlightenment. We all get the same amount of spiritual rain in the end, and it is only our willingness to use it that makes the difference.
Which reminds me: what with all the ran recently, its over-time to weed the garden, for rain alone will not make a good crop. Only constant care will. FK
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