RAINBOWS AND OPEN SKIES

     Have you ever had the experience of hearing a song, loving the music, and feeling the words penetrating right into your soul? It seems to speak to one, directly, and is exactly what you needed at that moment and at other similar moments in time. It is the gift and blessing of music, particularly when it is used to soothe, encourage, raise optimism, allow one to share in the knowledge that others feel the same way and have managed to climb out of that deep black hole into which you and they had fallen. It allows the oppressed to vent feelings, hopes and dreams with some of the most iconic songs of all times having come out of that category.
     Listen to the music, the words, and the haunting voice of Kacey Musgraves as she sings Rainbow. So many of us go through life facing hard times, personal and or national. We feel the rain, constant, tormenting us with a battering of sounds, from the pelting of tin roofs to the terrifying sounds of thunder and lightning right outside the window. Often people watch helplessly and hopelessly as the water pours in from a leaky or damaged roof and the waters outside rise and rise, threatening home and hearth, let alone lives.
     In these times, when the environment seems to have lost its moorings, when we seem to have retrogressed, when life, the pursuit of a proper job that allows one to live, not merely survive, we need help. We need relief from crazy life long loans, and from the awful pressure that comes from within and without as the politics of the country roil it so. We glance around the world and wonder just when all things went to hell in that proverbial basket and why did no one notice, place a roadblock, destroy that basket? Why and what are we to do about it now?
     We watch helplessly as the presumed leaders of our country are exposed in ever deeper layers of filth and corruption. Our public servants have transformed into servants for themselves, cooperating with all and sundry in the rush to enrich themselves as they sell their country down the river, betray its citizens. We watch as brave citizens of other countries protest and bring down governments and also with horror as we see the rise of perverted nationalism and a resurrection of old canards and evils. We read and watch with bated breath of the brave kids and people of Hong Kong who are fighting for their very lives, with the last 100 or so protesters being besieged in Polytechnic University. 
     The USA? What does its President say about this? Does he support these fighters for democracy? NO, most emphatically no, for he is too busy buddying up to the dictator rulers and despots of these very countries. That 'water line' is rising but wait, there is hope. The words of the song tell us so, encourage us, pull us out of our down in the blues dumps. We hear that "the sky is finally open", the rain, the wind, the lack of structure, has gone and in its place is the knowledge and encouragement of knowing
     "There's always been a rainbow hangin' over your head
         If you could see what I see, you'd be blinded by the colors
        Yellow, red and orange and green, and at least a million          others"
      We all need to take the advice and the words of this song into our hearts. We are to 'tie up our bows" and come out of the rain. Life is there, in all its glories, its colors. All we need do is reach out for the right, to correct, to wash our souls, to cleanse the government of wrongdoers. Only thus will we be able to understand that the rainbow has always been there, just waiting for us to  know that. Only then can we become the USA as it should be, a proud example for the entire world, a leader for the good and the right, for equality and opportunity, for recognition that we are all mankind and tied to this one little planet.
    See the colors. Hear the hope. Sing it in your souls and hearts and act on it.