The Deluge

Last night a crack split open the atmosphere, exposing the Earth without her protective cover briefly to the heavens. And out of this crack gushed an ocean's worth of water. It was all of the tears that had been cried over the year. All the tears spent over hunger, persecution, violence, poverty, injustice. All the tears cried by all the human eyes in all the countries around the world. For a whole year they had been collecting up there in heaven. Until our collective grief was overpowering and its weight finally broke through. Our tears were returned to us--transformed; our griefs sent back down to us in the form of nurturing rain.
I was suddenly exhausted. Purged. And I felt somehow clean. This is what I heard whispered on the wind, this is what was carried down on the sheets of rain: People of the world, your suffering was not for naught; it has made you stronger. It will restore you now. We are all in this together.
And so the monsoon began.