Acorn Rain

In 1998, during my last year of Episcopal ministry in Louisiana, my son, Ben, and I lived in a cabin on Bayou DeSiard in Monroe. The porch was glassed in and extended the length of the bayou side of the cabin, which stood thirty feet from the bayou bank. Oak and cypress protected the bank and the cabin from the sun. That porch got converted into my study and bedroom. Its roof was a single layer of wood covered in shingles. It was almost like sleeping under a tin roof, rain drops and acorns ricocheted off that roof like bullets off a boulder.

I was awakened before 5 a.m. one morning by a hail storm of oak nuggets loosed from their limb homes by the rather breathy predawn winds.The sky glowed with pink and gray; the trees waving to one another, their leaves hypnotically weaving like a dancer's arms, keeping time with the wind's whispered tempos. The bayou's face was almost glowing in the darkness with a softer pink/gray. It began to rain softly, distant lightening flashes brightening the frowning pink-gray sky.

The intensifying wind threw more nuggets onto the roof, and they rolled like gravel down its slope. God's breath was lightening the trees. The acorn-rain linked to feelings of fruitfulness and energy within. Those gigantic green arms and mammoth bark pillars sprout from such tiny seeds. The sense of divine inner strength arose, coexisting with anxieties, fears, and the inner darkness that pushes against God. Sproutings are pushing against the inner skin of the soul; look out, because new green is on its way.

Huge oaks grow from such tiny acorns. I think of our faith community and you whose faces flash before me from worship, meals, and conversations over various libations. With God's loving presence and the energy that flows from the Spirit, can we imagine what might sprout from our individual and community acorns of possibility?

I thought you might like to see the bayou bank as I saw it from my porch study.