This summer, I was blessed to be able to see a double rainbow. I had been outside, near the ocean and watching storm clouds come in, and eventually those clouds brought with them a torrential downpour. I ran back into my retreat room, only to wonder whether a rainbow might be in the mix. Sure enough, as I stood on the porch of my retreat room, a rainbow emerged. Although it was still raining, I ended up standing there, drenched, because I did not want to miss out on the gift. I waited and enjoyed “soaking it all in,” rain and rainbow, an experience of Ignatian savoring. To my surprise, as I stood there, a second bow emerged, parallel to the first one. The colors appeared slowly until I saw a double rainbow.
The next day I read, in the Gloucester Daily Times (Massachusetts), a scientist’s explanation that a double rainbow is really the same water droplets, refracted differently. The droplets produce a primary arc and a reversed secondary arc. Essentially there are two different paths for the light going through the same water droplets. What looks like two different bows are refractions of light from the same source.
Our relationship with God is much like this double rainbow. We long for God, and God longs for us. Think about that: while God in perfection has no need, God loves and longs for us. We seek God, and God seeks us out too. We thank God for all God’s gifts, and God appreciates when we use the gifts that we have been given for good. On retreat, I felt the sense of my heart resting in Jesus’ heart, and I know that Jesus’ heart rests within mine too.
The double rainbow reminds me that God’s gratuitous graces come first. It’s not only the case that we are striving to be closer to God, who simply awaits us. Rather, God always is extending God’s self out to us too. That mutual gift of us reaching to God and God reaching back to us is like a double rainbow: the same light, the same love, is refracted from God to us and back to God again.
