somewhere over the rainbow

I love rainbows. There’s something…. calming about them. They intrude into even my darkest moments, often when I am contemplating a grey sky and shaking my head at the weather. They make me smile. They appear and disappear with an almost magical quality. They can be small or large, dull or sharp, long lasting or transitory, but they all have this in common. They offer the hope of something better and new. They remind me that behind and above the grey clouds the sun still shines in God’s heaven.

 

It was Sir Isaac Newton who first discovered that sunlight falling upon a prism could split into its component colours through a process known as dispersion. From this I know that rainbows have a scientific explanation. That the bow is divided into bands displaying the different colours of the spectrum and is formed by the refraction and reflection of the sun's rays in drops of rain.  This physical explanation seems of secondary importance however to contemplating the sheer brilliance of the beautiful red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet of the arc. They seem like a thing apart, unreachable and incapable of being captured or put in a box.

 

It is probably for this reason that the legends of many cultures see the rainbow as a kind of bridge between heaven and earth. To Iranian Moslems, even the brilliance of the colours in a rainbow have significance. A prominent green means abundance, red means war, and yellow brings death. The Arawak Indians of South America recognise the rainbow as a fortunate sign if it seen over the ocean, while tribes in north-eastern Siberia see it as the tongue of the sun.

 

Rainbows only exist when two contrasting elements, sunlight and raindrops, come together in a creative tension producing perfect harmony.

Early in the story of the world, in the Judeo Christian tradition, after the great flood had subsided, just when Noah could have been forgiven for thinking that God had abandoned him and his family, God offered Noah the rainbow as a sign of his love and care.

He said “ I have placed my rainbow in the clouds as a sign of my promise until the end of time, to you and to all the earth.  When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will be seen in the clouds, and I will remember my promise to you and to every being, that never again will the floods come and destroy all life.”