It took me a year to hook up my rain barrel, and then it filled up in one day.  Now, in this northwest deluge, I'm over-draining an over-full barrel into an over-wet garden because I didn't think to hook up four barrels instead of one.  This whole rain barrel incident reminds me of my efforts to start environmental groups at church and at work.  They took years to get started, but now that they're official, the work is raining down on me beyond my capacity.  But instead of fretting my inadequate preparation, I'm going to get out in the rain and add barrels.

Rain barrels are intended to capture the rain from your roof during wet seasons, to use in dry seasons for watering your garden.  Ideally you set up enough rain barrels, on blocks and attached to one another via short hoses, so that they form a little barrel-network that has enough room for the copious rains that make our region famous and green. The mechanics of the barrels seem obvious now, but those details were competing with other factors.

It was hard enough just to get my partner Bo to agree to a rain barrel.  He liked the idea of them, but they're not exactly beautiful landscape features.  Where would we put it, how would we use it?  After Bo was nearly, but not totally convinced, I just went out and bought one from Seattle Audubon and brought it home to Bo. Surprise!   After Bo got over his initial annoyance, our rain barrel sat in our backyard, in the way, unconnected to our gutter, through the spring and summer, where it collected only a few gallons of rain from being out in the open.  Six months later, when I was ready to hook it up to a downspout in our front yard, it was fall, the garden was already soaked, and in order to move the barrel, I had to drain the few gallons into our grass driveway, where they watered the weeds on their way to the alley. After the rain barrel sat in our front yard for a few more weeks, Bo took the initiative to actually hook it up to the gutter, which involved sawing off part of the downspout.  You wonder why Bo was hesitant to get the barrel. 

But it was finally the right time for the barrel in the front yard.  Patty, the fearless volunteer leader at St. James, likes to say that the ground has to be ready for the seed to grow.  Volunteer efforts, like our St. James eco group, and my new environmental group at my company, need the right preparation before they're reading for planting.  I realized her wisdom after preparing for our group through two years of Just Faith classes before we launched the eco group at church. Our front yard also needed some preparation.  In the time since we'd got the barrel, Bo and I had removed all of the grass from our front yard and built raised vegetable beds.  We now had a reason for barrel in the front and it looks better too with our new farm-ish landscaping.  Rain barrels didn't match our old lawn aesthetic.  Basically the whole paradigm of our front yard had to change to make room for the rain barrel.

In the last two years, awareness about global warming has caused paradigm shifts at work and church too.  Just like our front yard now has a reason for rain barrels (vegetables), and therefore rain barrels look appropriate in it, our workplaces and churches are aware of their impact on the planet and their responsibility to do something.  So the paradigm shifts, the rain barrel is installed, and here comes the rain.

I left work a bit early yesterday.  Our rain barrel was overflowing and I had to do something before the puddle surrounding it caused it to give way and overturn.  Standing in the rain as the sun was setting, I quickly found some big stones to wedge underneath the barrel, to prop up one side, then another, under the strain of 55 gallons of water, until the barrel was raised high enough to attach a hose to the spout at its base.  Yes, in an ideal world I would have put an empty barrel up on blocks.  Better yet, I would have strung a few barrels together so they wouldn't overflow in a day. But we live and learn. It took a few hours to drain it halfway into various garden beds, that are already soaked and don't need the water.  By the time I went to bed last night, the barrel was full again. 

Taking a break last night from draining the rain barrel, I attended a short Advent retreat at St. James.  Sitting in small groups we talked about what we felt God was calling us to do in our lives.  I have fretted over my calling for years, but I found myself telling the small group that I'd found it - at least for now.  I'm called to green my church, my workplace, and in general, my life.  While I feel deep gratitude for this clarity, I also feel the enormity of these challenges. Fellow parishioners and coworkers have loads of great ideas for me and my teams to investigate. "Why don't we switch out all of the light bulbs?"  "We should really figure out how to calculate carbon footprints along supply chains."  I feel like a little barrel and the rain is coming down hard.

So this is my calling.  Set out one rain barrel.  Set out another, and another.  Seek help along the way from my friends at work and church.  Over time others are setting out their own rainbarrels, and someday we're all using them to water our front yard vegetable gardens, in front of our energy efficient churches, with hoses whose supply chain carbon footprints we understand. Someday. But right this moment, I've got to get out there and drain my solitary rainbarrel so it doesn't tip over while I'm at work.