In Northern California we are stuck inside as our landscape is engulfed by a thick blanket of wildfire smoke. If you and your kids would like to join my family in a little magical visualization to help call in the rain please do so — here’s how:

HOW TO CONJURE RAIN

To manifest something, you must feel like you already have it. That it is happening. It is not enough to Wish for Rain. We must CONJURE Rain:

I invite you to hear the wind stir.
See it lift the alder leaves, showing you their underbellies. A flurry of last year’s spent redwood needles shaken from their branches.

Feel a cool raindrop fall on your shoulder, your forehead, your eyelashes.
As drops fall more quickly your upturned palm is collecting a sip.
Taste it.

Inhale the distinct scent of moisture returning to pavement.
To hardened earth.
To dusty stone paths now washed shiny new and brightly colored.
Dingy ferns rinsed fresh.

As the clouds above let go, feel your instinct return to look upward and also be rinsed fresh.

With an uptick in the deluge hear gutters overflowing, thirsty plants drinking, moss springing back to life.

Water. Vital water.
Clinging to spider webs.
Filling the mug you forgot on the porch.
Dripping from the tip of your nose. Quenching fires and replenishing rivers.
Pooling in puddles asking to be jumped in with both feet.

And so, with a muddy splash, you do just that.

What vision do you have for conjuring rain?

Today for my 3rd grader’s morning journal prompt I asked him to help me Conjure Rain. I asked him to describe what he will do when we get our first heavy rain of the season. What he wrote about was the complete opposite of this moment I captured of him from last September, but 100% valid and powerful for conjuring nonetheless:

“I would make a cozy spot on the couch and make some toast and have my mom make us hot chocolate then eat all that stuff while we sit on the couch listening to an audiobook and watching the rain.”

What does the return of rain after a long dry spell feel like for you?
What does it look like?
Can you remember?
Ask your kids and your students.

Please share your vision here.