Many of my friends with gardens have been enjoying bumper crops this year.  The steady wetness of this past winter and spring have finally quenched the parched soil and the long thirstiness is over.  Everything is luxuriant with new growth, heavy with blooms and fruit.  It wasn't a thirst that was able to be remedied with a few weeks of rain.  It came from deep down where the ground water collects in the water tables.  Until that balance was restored, there wasn't any reservoir to draw from when the rain deserted.

 A long thirstiness is something the human spirit knows about as well.  Rather than being caused by a lack of rain, it comes from years of neglecting to spend time with what we love.  It's a dryness in our core that can no longer generate vitality and instead slowly ebbs away our liveliness.  When we fill our lives to overflowing with schedules, work, meals on the fly, shortchanged sleep, we empty our own reservoirs. A  profound parched weariness takes over.  For some, the thirst has gone on so long, it is hard to realize what has happened to us. We just feel empty.  That is when we need to be reminded that we are part of the Real World, and it is also essential for us to have both the rains of rest that quench and restore our bodies but also the equally essential ones that do so for our spirits: beauty, solitude, time for long gazes, gentle touches, and laughter.  None of which by the way, despite all that tries to tell us otherwise, require a hand held device of any kind.

"Today I'm flying low and I'm
not saying a word.
I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I'm taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I'm traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness.  One of the doors
into the temple."

               -"Today", from A Thousand Mornings,  by Mary Oliver