Rain

One bean leads to another... (See: Beanspiration). On Monday a friend came to visit, and I served some naan with olive oil and spices as we chatted and drank wine. The dinner hour approached, my husband was due home from volleyball practice, and I invited our friend to dinner and started cooking it. Zatarain's red beans and rice from a box, simple, but with a bit of a New Orleans kick.

As we began to eat, our friend said, "You have served me the traditional meal I would eat during my Nineveh fasting."

What?! I love when that happens. Red beans and rice--no meat--would be appropriate at the end of his Nineveh fasting period. The Fast of Ninevah honors Jonah's 3 days and 3 nights in the belly of the whale and a later fast celebrating the end of a plague.

The prediction was for rain or snow. We got snow. I still want rain.

I am re-reading Tiny Beautiful Things, by Cheryl Strayed, for book group. Today I re-read the letter from "Helpless Mom" and Strayed's reply in a section called Ten Angry Boys. Suddenly they were doing "rain," a group-in-a-circle activity involving creating a thunderstorm with body sounds. That was the activity I taught my Young at Heartland group, a community of senior actors. We loved it, and so did these ten angry boys and their families! I remember when I first taught it, I said I had read about it in a book. This book. But I had forgotten which book till today!

Cheryl Strayed is so very wise and compassionate. She says "[t]hat we must help ourselves. That after destiny has delivered what it delivers, we are responsible for our lives."

The sky delivered snow. Time to shovel it. Destiny keeps delivering tiny beautiful things*--thank you!--on Random Coincidays!

*like a former student's new baby named Rain!