Dear Friend
🌹🎶 April Songshowers 🎶🌹
"April, the angel of the months, the young love of the year."
– Vita Sackville-West - author, gardener (1892-1962)
As Spring puts on its beautiful show of sunshine and flowers, it's been so joyful to show my face to the sun and turn towards a new season.
As I wondered and wandered around looking for some words to share with you this April, I found myself contemplating three forms of showers.
April Showers
Again the blackbirds sings; the streams
Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams,
And tremble in the April showers
The tassels of the maple flowers
- John Greenleaf Whittier, (1807-1892 ) American abolitionist, Quaker, poet
A shower is a watery weather show, part of the incredible natural water cycle. As water evaporates from planetary surfaces, particles of condensation collect in clouds, falling back to earth when they become too heavy to stay airborne.
As light travels more slowly in water than air, sunrays bend and split into separate colours when caught in raindrops, undergoing a series of refractions and reflections. When a huge crowd of raindrops do this simultaneously, it creates a beautiful rainbow show in the sky.
The Show
Water, stories, the body,
all the things we do, are mediums
that hide and show what’s hidden.
Story Water - Rumi (Persian Poet 1207-1273) translated Coleman Barks
The word show comes from word roots meaning to see, observe, perceive.
As appearances are not always what they seem, there are ambivalent associations around shows. To be a showy show pony or a show-off who steals the show is frowned upon, yet we applaud showstoppers and love a good show. Sometimes The Show Must Go On, regardless of how you feel internally, so we do our best to keep the show on the road, because you're only as good as your last show. No wonder that many of us feel trepidation around
showing our true colours on or off stage.
A show stands on the boundary between private and public.
We may ask a person we are unsure of to show me the money,
or encourage a shy person to show more of themselves.
We risk exposure or rejection of our shows of affection, concern or love.
Show and tell is one of the most fundamental forms of storytelling taught to children, and showtime marks the public end of a private creative process. Art shows a mirror to society through the creative process of externalising the internal world, often showing up aspects of society which are taboo, hidden or repressed. Artists may risk exile, censorship and even death as a result.
With more and more life out on show on social media and Reality TV,
humans have an enduring fascination with what's going on behind the scenes of the show. But of course, as soon as what is hidden is put on show, its nature changes. So there is a paradoxical dance between our longing to
show who we really are, whilst retaining our privacy.
Showing the Way
I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
- Stephen/ Etienne de Grellet, Quaker missionary (1773-1855)
We talk highly of those who show up for us. A way shower may show us new ways to see, perceive or travel through our inner and external worlds.
We each have walked paths through life that may be of service to others - lessons and guidance we can pass on as we pass by.
So daring to show ourselves creatively and personally allows us to find and share our unique contribution.
Like the raindrops of April Showers, we can put on rainbow shows as we reflect and refract the light of our experiences.
What story, song or creative act would you show if you dared?
What way could you show to serve your fellow travellers?
How will you dance between the seen and unseen
in this year's April Showers? | 
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