Double Rainbows and Our Levels of Faith

As many of you know, Peg and I recently celebrated our honeymoon on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.

Kauai is the northernmost inhabited Hawaiian island. There are a few very small islands in the Hawaiian archipelago that are to the north of Kauai, but you won’t find a hotel, restaurant, or people living on them.

We are very grateful that several people in our spiritual community know so much about Hawaii. When we told them what we were looking for they all directed us to Kauai, which is an incredible tropical land of beautiful beaches, incredible greenery, and very warm and friendly people.

I wonder if our Spiritual Life Center friends had not pointed out Kauai to us if we would have gone to this island? But after it was pointed out to us, decisions were relatively easy to make, and things fell into place very quickly.

I think this is true about mentors in so many different areas of our lives. Often we don’t know where to look. But when a mentor makes an important suggestion, we then know where to focus, and it seems as if opportunities come our way.

We did many interesting things on Kauai, but let me share with you two incredible experiences that we had. First, we went on a helicopter tour of the island. Peg chose to make it a “doors off” helicopter experience. Yes, there were literally no doors on our part of the helicopter, which got us a lot closer to everything.

It was interesting to see the interior of the island and go over the mountains and valleys that were used in many of the scenes from Jurassic Park. We saw incredible waterfalls, and we were in the craters of several extinct volcanoes.

Second, we cooked and arranged our own sunrise breakfast on Tunnel Beach — which is recognized as one of the most extraordinary beaches in Kauai.

But as the Buddha teaches us, all things do end in the material world. As we were headed back to the airport to fly home to Sacramento, we went through an intense downpour of rain. But the neat thing about Kauai is that, if you don’t like the weather then just wait 10 minutes or drive 10 miles down the road.

As we broke into the sunshine, there was not one – but two beautiful rainbows. The double rainbow was so stunning and a heartwarming way of saying goodbye to the island.

A double rainbow appears when sunlight reflects inside raindrops. The brighter primary rainbow results from one internal reflection. The fainter secondary rainbow results from two reflections and appears reversed: violet on the outside and red on the inside.

Symbolically, double rainbows are often interpreted as signs of hope, transformation, blessing, or renewal. In the biblical tradition, the rainbow recalls God’s covenant with Noah. In this case, the rainbow was a sign of God’s promise.

In some spiritual traditions, the rainbow is a sign of personal connection with the divine. The double rainbow often has been seen as a sign of an intense relationship with the Divine. These meanings are of course interpretive rather than scientific. But double rainbows really have created a sense of wonder in so many individuals down through the ages.

But all of the above reminded me of an experience that happened roughly 15 years ago. I was driving from our then home in Northern Virginia with my late wife, Debbie, and my then eight year-old daughter, Rachel. We were headed to Glacier National Park in Montana.

I was so glad that we were making this interstate car trip. For example, I probably never would’ve seen the Dakota’s if not for this trip. The Dakota “Bad Lands” were incredible, and I can understand Teddy Roosevelt’s fascination with the place.

So we were in North Dakota at the time when the state was going through it’s big fracking oil extraction boom. We had reservations at a beautiful hotel right near Glacier National Park. Actually, we were staying in a refurbished railroad caboose.

But for the rest of the trip, we were taking the “luck and adventure of the road.” So far we had done very well. But in North Dakota, so many people have been drawn to the state to work in the expanding fracking industry, that a motel room was often hard to come by.

It was raining cats and dogs, and we pulled into this little restaurant for a meal. Over our table was a beautiful photograph of this restaurant with a double rainbow right above it. I pointed it out to Debbie and said that I found it very beautiful.

Debbie looked at me as if I were one of the biggest numbskulls on the face of the Earth. “Rick, have you ever heard of Photoshop?,” she asked. She explained to me how a computer program could doctor up a picture. It could superimpose a rainbow on any object, and it could easily slap a double rainbow on a restaurant.

We finished our meal and walked outside. The rain had stopped and the sun had come out. We looked up, and guess what we saw? There above us was the most beautiful double rainbow! “Well, I was wrong about this one,” Debbie apologized.

I think that so often many of us find the idea of an all loving and forgiving God sort of like a double rainbow: Too good to be true! We find it hard to realize that we are really one with the One. And yet if we are willing to take that leap of faith, we find that double rainbows can and do exist — and exist in our lives despite the hard stuff that we often face.

No one goes through this thing called life unscathed. However, double rainbow experiences are there for us if we take the time — and drop the skepticism — to see them.

Many blessings,

Rev. Rick