When I was a kid, I played outside with my friends in the neighborhood. You know, like most kids did back when they were of the “kid” age. We would usually get pretty engaged in our little make-believe games, and nobody would go home until it was time for their dinners (I ate at near eight p.m., while everyone else was a six o'clocker, predictably) or the sun was starting to go down and make the streets shadowy. However, there was an exception to this. Any time it started to rain, the other person with whom I was playing would immediately say, “I have to go inside,” and they would disappear rapidly into their houses, quick to pacify impatient and worried mothers. Very soon, the streets would be empty of children. All except me, that is.

My brother and I were raised on rain, complete with (sometimes) wearing rain jackets and making paper boats and splashing in the gutters and all. I never understood why every other kid would go inside when the rain came out. I didn't mind too much, though. It allowed us to dominate the streets, to run about at our leisure, to play our own games or be alone with our thoughts.

Rain, in itself, is quite magical. Living in the desert of central New Mexico, it's not a commonplace occurrence, probably explaining why the neighbors were wary of it. It's gentle, and yet all-powerful; it can drip down your face with gentle caresses, and in the next instant pelt you with icy droplets, blinding you with white and making you stumble aimlessly in fright to try and return home. Sometimes it performs a beautiful solo melody, and sometimes the soft drip is accompanied by the resonance of thunder as it laughs its rumbling laugh in the distance. Rain can chill you to the bone, and yet at the same time warm your heart, make you smile and skip and dance and praise the heavens.

Rain is a gift. Rain is the external component of my blood. If I hear splashing outside my window, or see fleeting drops sprinkle the pavement, I run to the closet – or, better yet, straight out the front door. My raincoat and wind pants are the ritual clothes of this religion. I don't wear boots because they don't protect my feet from being wet or blistered with painful red marks. Barefoot – it is the mark of the devout believer to tiptoe through the gutter rivers without shoes, to let the water seep into you through the soles of your feet, to let the tears of the earth flow into your veins, to become one with the universe.

I talk to rain sometimes. She is the wonderful, gracious and giving woman in the midst of her crazy brothers thunder and lightning. I speak in murmurs, mostly, though whispers would be more fitting at times. I ask where she comes from, but she quietly pats me on the head and gently shushes me, and I content myself with the knowledge that she's the most traveled deity there is, the most knowledgeable, the most caring - next to the sun, of course; but the sun is there every day and she blesses all of us from her one place in the sky while the earth turns and turns.

I don't understand why my friends were kept from this world, and presently stay away from it of their own accord. How is worshiping the earth upon which you walk and rest, the sky from which falls rain and sun, a heathen ritual? This religion is open to all; this religion is already part of everyone. Much like the other gods, she has good and bad days, times where she loves the people and times where she wants nothing more than to inflict suffering upon them. I love her for all these reasons. She holds the power, not I; she makes the tides turn and the rivers flow, not I. I stand in awe at her majesty and try my hardest to even catch a glimpse of understanding, but it is much too great for a mortal to comprehend. How do others not yearn to do this? How do others not long to be up among the stars, gossiping about all of the Milky Way's scandals and the planets' secrets?

Even now, I hear complaints. I can only defend her with my stoic face and clenched hands. How dare they think twice about her. She is the reason you live! I want to shout. She is the reason we eat, and sleep, and breathe! And all you ever do in thanks is hide and deny and hiss with complaint.

I am appalled at humanity for this. Umbrellas – what? How can you think to shield yourself from the intimate blessing of water running down your face and soaking your skin? How can you scurry away to your hovel without even taking a moment to realize the gift you are being offered? How can you even say one ungrateful word when puddles form in ditches and raindrops splatter your windows?

Rain forgives them; she forgives all of us. Even when the earth and its peoples are parched with thirst, when they see no hope of her ever returning, there she appears on the horizon. She soars up above, and every drop of her juice is a promise: she will never leave. She will try her hardest not to give up on us (like most of us, she can't help having bad days).

But, most of all?

She will never stop loving us, and I will never stop loving her.