CLOUDS AND SUN

Several months ago the company I work for got involved with a company that does motivational seminars. Near as I can tell, most of the motivation comes from sleep deprivation  memorization and very loud rock music. Needless to say we've been inundated with "feeling good, team building, yada yada" ever since. I have nothing personal against motivatonal speakers, but they do not ring my chimes.

A couple of months ago, someone put up two pictures. One was a blue sky and one was a cloudy sky, Above them was the question "Which one will you remember?" That prompted this little meditation.

Blue skies are pretty but uninteresting. Once you realize it's blue-basically it's "yippee, it's not going to rain!" By the way,  l live in the Eugene-Springfield area of Oregon. We have the reputation for getting far more rain than we really do. Lately we've been geting about 35 inches or so a year, mostly from October to May.

Now, clouds are fun. How many of you spent a summer afternoon lookimg up and trying to decide if that big one over there was a shark or an elephant. The shapes and colors are infinite. There are big, puffy, pure white cotton balls or high, wispy blue-white tendrils. Creamy grey patterns that look like fish scales or great dark almost blue black banks with pounding impenetrable downpours underneath. If you are particularly blessesd, the sun will be in just the right place to put a rainbow under those black clouds.

We went to my nephews' baseball playoffs a few years ago.The games were in Madras, just east of the Oregon High Cascades. There were thundershowers in the distance all day. If you were lucky the wind came from that direction and cooled things off a little. When we headed south for Sisters and the western cut-off for home there was a cloud bank to the east. It was almost black and there was a full double rainbow underneath. That rainbow followed us for about twenty miles.

Somehow, blue skies look bluer next to a pure white cloud. The patches of blue peeking through the clouds look so shy. Almost like children peeking over the window sill to see if anyone else is out playing.