Heroes Not Zombies

One day last year I walked outside and saw this rainbow at the top of the vineyards.

Yeah, sure, I’ve seen a ton of rainbows in my life but I’d never, ever, seen one like this.

I took several photographs but I’m not sure any really captured the view.

The rainbow lasted for about 30 minutes. Much, much longer than any other rainbow I’ve seen.

It’s brightness was incredible. If you look carefully you can see a second, parallel one just to the right of the main one. But the most astonishing thing was how different the world looked under the actual rainbow. You can see that quite clearly. The colour of the sky to the left of the rainbow ie under it, is completely different to the colour of the sky elsewhere. I’ve never seen that before.

You know the old story about finding gold at the end of the rainbow? Well, it seemed that this rainbow was arching over an entirely golden world.

There is another thought I had during that rainbow, and which come back to me now. That rainbows are a symbol of hope. Where does that come from? Is it the story of Noah and The Flood in the Old Testament? I suppose that’s where I get that memory. I was taught that the rainbow represented God’s promise not to flood the Earth again. It’s not entirely clear to me how that story of a promise morphed into a symbol of hope. So I went looking to see – are there other origins to this association of hope with rainbows? Actually, there seems to be a huge diversity amongst various cultures (why wouldn’t there be?) Here’s where I explored some of them.

One of the things which struck me, reading through that entry in wikipedia, was how often the rainbow was seen as a bridge.

Well that’s convenient! Because I wrote about how January is named after Janus, the god with two faces, one looking back and one forward. Look at this, from the wikipedia entry about Janus –

While the fundamental nature of Janus is debated, in most modern scholars’ view the god’s functions may be seen as being organized around a single principle: presiding over all beginnings and transitions, whether abstract or concrete, sacred or profane. Interpretations concerning the god’s fundamental nature either limit it to this general function or emphasize a concrete or particular aspect of it (identifying him with light, the sun, the moon, time, movement, the year, doorways, bridges etc.)

It feels like we are living in a time of transition (aren’t we always??) so maybe a beautiful rainbow is a good place to start the year – with hope, with a sense of new beginnings, and with the idea of a path, or a bridge, there, inviting us to follow it.

What about you? What do you associate with the appearance of a rainbow? Were you handed down any stories?

PS Didn’t I say yesterday I was starting a new blog over at bobleckridge.com/read ? Well, after yesterday’s post here, despite it being the first in a year, I was surprised and delighted by all the messages I received, and the new followers who signed up to heroesnotzombies. So, I’ve reminded myself of one of my favourite teachings – “AND not OR”. I’ll continue to post here, as well as creating new content for my new site. The new site will have a fresh photo of mine every week on the home page, an ever expanding gallery of my photos at bobleckridge.com/look and videos and the spoken word too, as well as articles and blog posts.