Rainbows and Reality

“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue,” sings Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. “And the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true.”

If only it were that simple, to fly above the chaos, past the rainbow, where the sky is clear blue, so rich in color it almost burns your eyes. A place where “troubles melt like lemon drops, way above the chimney tops.”

We can go there, perhaps in meditation, in prayer, in deeper thought in some place of quiet and calm. A seashore. A park bench. A library. A garden of flowers. A walk through lush trees. A church sanctuary.

Those can be times of healing, restoration, invigoration, insight, and learning.

It was the brilliant naturalist, Thoreau, who wrote, “Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk in love and reverence.”

That’s an idea worthy of practice.

Whatever religion you follow has a similar viewpoint. Judaism calls for an intelligent mind. Buddhism asks us to honor Karma and seek rebirth. Islam says to follow the teachings of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Christianity guides us to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and our neighbor as ourselves.

Why is all of that so hard to do?

There is that great scene in John Irving’s novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, where the narrator sits in the vestry where the minister robes himself in the cloaks of his calling. Meany has died and the narrator, Meany’s best friend, thinks to himself, "I sat in the dark of the vestry office, thinking that religion was only a career for Pastor Merrill. He taught the same old stories, with the same old cast of characters; he preached the same old virtues and values, and he theologized on the same old ‘miracles’—yet he appeared not to believe a word in any of it.”

Why don’t we seek what’s beyond the rainbow? Why don’t we honor silence and peace? Why can’t we settle into a life of service to others? Why is respecting those different from us such a difficult task? And why do we so often fail to live up to our faith? Why do we sometimes not even try?

Most importantly, why would any of us want to live in anger, in resentments, jealous of others, unkind and cruel, selfish, brash, and bitter?

What possible rewards are there in that kind of mindset? How does any of that move us closer to one another? How does that ever get us to where we “walk in love and reverence.”

Whatever peaceful place we retreat to, we inevitably must return to the tangible realities of life, what writer Robert Goolrick amusingly calls the risk of “sailing to Europe on the Titanic and flying home on the Hindenburg.”

The truth is, we have to work at this business of good living. All the time. Our rainbow respites help with that but we can’t stay in them.

We’re not born with wings of angels, we have to construct them out of concentrated living and then repair them when they are damaged by life’s ongoing challenges. There is nothing terrible about that. It’s the beauty of our humanity. And we learn from it that love without reward is still valuable and enduring.

Let’s fly over the rainbow and then return to walk in love and reverence.

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The Unclad Soul

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