Looking at the forecast for the weekend, I saw nothing but showers, showers, and more showers. I know I should not complain since this autumn in northern Spain has been unusually warm and dry. But unlike the first snow fall which is always thrilling and makes you want to play outside, the first rain showers are tiring and make you want to stay inside. However, like the stubborn person that I am, I ignored nature's warning and attempted a walk to church this morning.
Allow me to preface this that before I left the house, the skies were blue. And the winds were down. Since I could not find my umbrella for the life of me, I decided to just carry my rain jacket with me for safe measure. What an idiot, I tell you. I should have taken those few extra minutes to find my precious umbrella. But what did I do? I left the house in a hurry.
New Life lesson: Do not be in a hurry when dealing with Mother Nature.
Hurrying down the hill, I met up with one ugly, one dark, one scary-looking storm cloud. Instead of turning around and just saying a few prayers back home to make up my absence in church, I carried on. As the first droplets hit my head, I pulled over my hood. As the breeze got a little colder, I pulled the jacket closer to me. However, as the droplets turned to pelting rain and the breeze changed to an icy wind, I made a run for it. Unfortunately it took more than a block or two in to find a place to take cover. By the time I found cover under the overhang of a building, the wind and rain had already pelted me both sideways and from top to bottom.
Fifteen minutes I waited for the rain the clear. So fifteen minutes I arrived late to church. Soaked to the bone, I found an empty seat towards the back which luckily saved me the embarrassment of walking up towards the front with squeaky shoes. Sitting in the cold, dark cathedral, I had arrived towards the end of the sermon. Too wet to care to listen, it took a few moments for me to realize that the church service had something extra special. A baptism.
I love baptisms. Why? I don't know. Probably because I love watching the babies squirm as water is poured gently over them. And probably because it is such a beautiful day for both the parents and godparents. And what a beautiful day this day turned out to be during mass for the newborn and family. I swear I tell the truth about this.
Because of few decorations and windows, the church is not known for exuberant color nor brightness. Rather its lack of flair enhances the Gothic environment that it was tended to portray. But on this particular day in midst of the constant rain showers, a ray of sunlight hit the windows perfectly during the baptismal ceremony so that the whole inside of the cathedral lit up.
After having been drenched by showers due to walking to church and after having watched a baby receive his first baptism of holy water, the ray of sunlight lit up many lives that morning.
Perhaps it was a small moment during the day that for some is only an occurrence and nothing more. There are others, though, who take these moments a little bit more seriously. After just figuring out what I want from my life, I had to retake Life's new lesson into consideration with haste. So upon leaving the building and leaving the newly baptized child, I walked around in the light. No hurry. No rush. I wandered around the old surroundings of the cathedral. A place I have come to know and understand well after these past few months. In the meantime, I took videos of what I like to call what happens to the sea when rain showers meet up with light. The waves were gorgeous today with their forms and colors distinct to what Mother Nature brought in from the weekend of showers and light.
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