The first picture I took at 5:02pm on October 31, 2011

Second picture-5:04pm

     On October 31^st, 2011, I was entering the adult education building where I was to teach another section of an adult creative writing course. A thunderstorm had added yet another gloomy day to my week. I’d noticed that Sheena was slowing down and not following me around the house like before, and I let her stay in whatever room I’d just left, usually my office, my writer’s cave. When she woke up, she’d join me, or I’d come back, no problem. I loved the class I was teaching. I had confidence in my presentations and was having fun looking at their various writings and interacting with the students.

Third picture-5:06pm

     It was about 5:00pm and as I drove into the school’s massive parking lot, I saw an extremely large and bright rainbow’s end, just a few feet away. I looked up and saw another slightly less bright rainbow! It was the brightness of a normal rainbow. The first rainbow was so bright and close that I felt like I could touch it. I could see its end at a white pickup truck about 30 feet away. I tried to ignore it because I had to make handout copies for my class, but the urge to take pictures took over. I sat down my bookbag out of the rain and whipped out my cell phone. Other people around me were doing the same and exclaiming how they’d never seen anything like it. My heart began to pound with excitement as I decided to brave the misty remnants of the storm’s rain to try to touch the rainbow’s end. I knew there was no pot of gold, but at least I could say I touched a rainbow’s end.  As I walked toward the white pickup, the rainbow’s end moved away! It took me a few minutes to realize, the angle of the sunlight behind me and the misty rain all around that entire part of the city would make the rainbow move. Duh! But, that wasn’t the point, I was having a few minutes of fun, distraction from what I knew was to come, and re-enacting something I’d done as a child in the fifties, trying to find a small rainbow’s end in a park I and my brothers were playing in. As the sun moved, the rainbow receded from me today. It occurred to me that I was literally IN the rainbow’s end today!

Last picture-5:08pm

I ran to the office where I make student copies of handouts, I asked the secretaries if they’d seen the rainbow. They were as excited as I was. They’d seen it and taken pictures, too. Later in class, I asked my students if they’d seen it. They all had and one lady, who’d driven from a city the storm had just left, said the main rainbow had been so bright that she’d had to put her visor down to see the road ahead of her.

The next day, I saw a picture and article about the rainbows in the local newspaper. Interviewed people gushed about them in the article, many mirroring my student’s need to put their visors down. I know rainbows are God’s promise to not destroy the Earth and humanity by flood again and that some ancient civilizations had varying theories about them, such as the ancient Norse believing they are the bridge to get to Asgard. I took these rainbows as gifts from God that day to give me some peace and beauty in a dark time of my life.

         As I was writing this, it occurred to me that I was surrounded by one of God’s promises that afternoon because anyone to the south of me just the right distance away would see that gigantic bright rainbow and its twin surrounding me. Is that the definition of God’s love?