HAVE YOU LOST YOUR UMBRELLA?

Precursor to the umbrella?

How many umbrellas do you have? I have quite a few. Probably because unless I can confirm that rain is coming by looking out our window, I just don’t believe the weathermen. But despite the bad rap they get, sometimes they are right. So I’ve been caught in the rain a few times.  Once I got so wet in my wool coat and no one would sit next to me on the bus!  If I’m lucky, I can run into a store and get me a $4.00 umbrella and be protected while waiting for my bus. This is how umbrellas multiply on me. I even have a checkered £2.50 folding umbrella from London. We just didn’t believe they would have rain in late March, but rain it did for almost the whole week we were there.

In the US umbrellas are what I would call “as needed” accoutrement. If it looks like rain, we think of it; otherwise, it is forgotten. In Asia, it is a necessity because it is used both on rainy and sunny days. Usual sunny days go up to the 90’s F. It is wise to have an umbrella to shade one from the intense rays of the sun. When one is on the equator, as we were in Indonesia, one learns this fast. And, of course, when the rains come, one will not want to get wet. When I was a little girl, my mother always used to remind me that I would catch a cold if I got wet from the rain. She knew I loved to play in the rain. My longtime friend and mentor +Marilee Barker loved walking in the rain sans umbrella. She would say, “In the Philippines rain is a season, not a reason.”

Umbrellas are not only used for protection from sun and rain, they have also been used to show status as in the case of royalty, religion or wealth. Wikipedia says “The umbraculum (better known in the Italian form ombrellino) is a canopy or umbrella (consisting of alternating red and gold stripes, the traditional colours of the city of Rome and so, until 1808, of the papacy) whose original function was quite simply to provide shade. As it was traditionally a royal prerogative to walk beneath a canopy, Pope Alexander VI began using the umbraculum to symbolise the temporal powers of the Papacy; it was formerly carried by a man standing behind the Pope. It featured in the former arms of the Papal States.”

With an umbrella we can walk through the rain or under the intense heat of the sun.  They help us go from point A to point B in fair or foul weather.  They enable us.  They assure us that we will not be burned by the sun nor be drenched by the rain. We can even go singing in the rain as Gene Kelly so beautifully did in that famous movie.  With one I can wear my wool coat on a rainy day and not end up looking and smelling like a doused sheep. There is a lot of comfort in having an umbrella.  

I think of my parents as my umbrellas.  My American husband tells me that I may be off in this.  Probably because in America, an umbrella has just 50% of the function it has in Asia.  To Asians, it is a constant protection. When my parents passed away, I felt I lost that.  Even if as an adult I moved away from their “shade”, the assurance that they were there was very comforting.  When Mom Major passed away recently, Don and I felt a certain vulnerability.  We felt unprotected, the way one walks in the rain without an umbrella.  She was our last umbrella. Though in her last few years a cruel disease started to steal her away from us, we felt that her presence stayed with us.  In our younger years our parents walked with us, shielding and protecting us from hurts and pain, giving us shade from disappointments and failures.  At times when we felt we did not have the strength to go on, they enabled us.  They were with us as we grew into the kind of people we have become.  We grieve over this loss, but amid this grief, we can look up to a higher umbrella, to Him who provides shade for those who dwell in His secret places.  Have you lost your umbrella?  Look up, there is a higher One.

 

He who dwells in the secret places of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.  (Psalm 91:1 NIV)