“Trust yourself.  Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.  Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.”

– Golda Meir

If you say there can never be too much of a good thing, I suggest that you check with someone whose car is floating away in the rain in Tennessee.

It hardly seems possible that there could be leftover rain from the storm that dropped up to 20 inches on our neighbors to the south, but there is.  It has been falling steadily since midnight, and it appears that we won’t see the sun before noon.  The birds that nest in the trees and shrubs around my house are noisy but invisible this morning — no doubt they are protecting their nests from the rain and the wind.  Only a tiny finch has emerged to explore the upper area of our porch roof and possibly plan a move to shelter.

This was a perfect day to read the words of Golda Meir and hear her speak of creating the kind of self you will be happy to live with by “fanning the tiny inner sparks of possibility” in order to light the flame that will be the achievement you bring to the world.  And it’s raining.  Hard.  Have you ever gone camping and relied on a fire for warmth, light, and cooking?  Some of our happiest times with our children were spent in the woods enjoying the slow and steady process of gathering wood, fanning the tiny wisp of smoke until it became a tiny flame, carefully feeding it until it became a fire, and only then enjoying its usefulness as a way to cook our dinner.

Have you ever tried to start a campfire on a rainy day?  I recall a couple of trips where we were surprised by rain and awoke in the morning to puddles in the fire ring.  We would take the wood we had kept undercover for just such a situation, grab the damp matches and a few scraps of paper and get to work.  Against the odds, we would focus all our attention on the tiny flame and on using it to ignite larger and larger twigs until the fire grew large and strong again.

Each life has unexpected rain — the kind that falls without warning and causes floods and puts out campfires.  We are not allowed, on these sorts of days, to stop trusting our spark.  We are not allowed, on these sorts of days, to become less than the kind of person we will be happy to live with all our lives.  It is not enough for the spark to exist in a sheltered place.  Although it is reassuring to know that the spark is a part of us, we must not allow reassurance to become complacence.  On the rainy days, we have the opportunity to discover just how strong our intent is to become the flame that lights the world.  Being born is a gift we are given.  The spark is a gift of being alive.  What kind of flame we bring to our world is the gift of gratitude we return to our world.  When the rains come — and they will — let us focus our attention on the wisp of smoke that rises when the spark touches the tinder.  Let us keep our fires burning.