10 Jun Parched Earth
One of the essential elements for growth, nature needs water. Without moisture plants wither and the dry soil erodes. For weeks the pram has rattled across the hard ground. Now the rain falls at last to lick the cracks where shoes and balls have rubbed the grass bare. The undergrowth seems to breathe a sigh of relief as it gulps down large droplets of cool wet. “Grandfather used to call the rain ‘the erotic ritual between heaven and Earth’,” writes Malidoma Patrice Somé in ‘Of Water and the Spirit’. This sensual blessing of water on parched earth mirrors the tears, that may come when sorrow is tended, perhaps after a long drought. Sobonfu Somé lately, and Malidoma still, brings wisdom from the Dagara people of Burkina Faso to the west. I have learned how water helps me to connect to feelings, to allow suffering to be honoured, to remind me of the cycles of life and death. I feel the rain stroke my skin, and the flow of life moving through me.
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