The sacred world lifts up its head
To notice—
We are double, triple-blessed ~ Joy Harjo

When I was growing up in Seattle, we could always tell the out-of-towners. The out-of-towners always carried umbrellas. We kids just had hats and hoods and coats and boots. If rain had kept us inside, we would have been dry but as white as Boo Radley, never seeing the light of day. We did everything in the rain. And the rain, more often than not, made our land luscious and green and our lives drizzled with delight. Sprinkle was not what you put on donuts. It was a well-worn verb. I think children appreciate the rain more than adults, but even in my gray-haired days living in this sun-soaked land of southern California, I miss the rain from time to time, have a hankering for those gray skies that are blamed for altering the moods of those who have migrated to the Pacific Northwest from sunny regions of the world.

My sister texted me yesterday: “Rain rain rain in Seattle.” It brought Joy Harjo’s poem “Praise the Rain” to mind. The poem conjures up St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Brother Sun. Unlike Francis who offers praise directly to the Creator of the natural world, Harjo praises the earthy and earthly realities directly. Her understanding of the earth’s sacredness is as ubiquitous as the drizzle in Seattle.

“Praise the Rain” is a poem about noticing, being aware and appreciative. The word appraisal and praise are kin. To appraise is to determine and know the value and worth of something. Praise is what any awakened person does when he or she pays attention, notices, and realizes that wonder is no longer enough, and that in being alive we are “double, triple-blessed.”

Harjo’s poem also reminds me of Coleman Barks’ rendering of Rumi’s poem “The Guest House.” Rumi compares the human experience to a house that daily plays host to surprising visitors: “A joy, a depression, a meanness,/ some momentary awareness/ . . . a crowd of sorrows/ . . .  The dark thought, the shame, the malice.” He paradoxically encourages the reader to “Welcome and entertain them all!” and to “meet them at the door laughing,/ and invite them in.”

The reasoning or bewildering wisdom behind his counter-intuitive counsel is that we never know the means of grace, we never know in what guise or disguise it will show up on the doorstep of our lives unannounced and uninvited. The wise ones know that grace is non-discriminating when it comes to its means of transportation or manifestation. So Rumi advises: “treat each guest honorably,” even the ones that appear to dishonor us because unbeknown to the reader “He may be clearing you out/ for some new delight.” The poet recommends that we ” Be grateful for whoever comes,/ because each has been sent/ as a guide from beyond.”

Harjo praises what Kathleen Norris calls the “quotidian mysteries” that surround us and are too easily and too often taken for granted: rain, animals, house, trees, sky, cloud.” But like Rumi, she also encourages the counter-intuitive: “Praise the hurt. . . the dark. . . the baby cry. . . Praise crazy. Praise sad.” She advocates we both “Praise the eater and the eaten. . . Praise beginnings; Praise the end.” The inference and appraisal is that on whichever path we are led, it will be of hidden and inestimable value, full of grace, worthy of our attention and praise.

In the beginning—“Praise the rain”—and the end—“Praise the rain”—of the poem and of life, what makes living noble and of inestimable worth is the realization that what goes around comes around, the alpha and omega embrace and kiss. Praise is that kiss. “Praise the rain; it brings more rain. Praise the rain; it brings more rain.” And praise the rain because it brings more praise, if we but lift up our heads.

Praise the Rain
by Joy Harjo