A female rain.
This morning, leaving the gym, a pretty good rain was coming down, and I thought of my friend Pete.
Pete is a full-blooded Cheyenne Indian with pitch-black hair—undyed, straight, always neatly folded behind his ears into two long braids. Pete has the kindest, gentlest soul. He’s not a man of many words, but when he does speak, you listen.
Once, when he visited my husband and me, we went out to breakfast. It was raining that day, too. Pete looked out the window, watching the rain come down, and said, simply, “A female rain.”
We asked him what he meant, and he told us that Indians recognize two kinds of rain. A female rain is light, soft, slow-moving, nourishing. A male rain is loud, forceful, violent—making its presence known.
He kept looking out the window, quiet for a while, then he noticed people rushing to their cars, ducking their heads, shielding themselves from the light rain. “You won’t see Indians do that,” he said. “We look at rain with reverence. It’s life. When it rains, we stand in it, look up to the sky, open our palms. We receive it.”
I’ve never forgotten that.
This morning, a couple of people hurried past me, even in rain jackets, rushing either to get inside to sweat or rushing out, already sweaty, to get back to their cars. I thought of Pete and smiled. I took my time.
And I wondered—what else do we rush past without seeing? What blessings or small truths are standing right in front of us, waiting to be received?
My computer froze as I was writing this, and I lost the whole first version. I was annoyed. But what if this version—this one right here—is better?
The same thing happens in the studio all the time. The paint won’t dry fast enough, or I can’t get the color I want, and I feel like I’m wasting paint. Or I can’t see where the painting is going and it’s taking far longer than I planned. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the not-knowing is the invitation. Maybe slowing down, fighting with the paint, being forced to really look—maybe that’s where the real work begins.
Maybe that’s the female rain.