What Is the Rainbow Connection?

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"Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?"

Kermit's question is on target. It penetrates our veneer of superficiality and touches our vulnerability to what is real beyond our reality. It self-categorizes itself among the big questions of life.

What keeps us  singing about rainbows?

What is this longing to know what is  on the other side?

We all have the capacity to wonder. Our relative ignorance is the source of much human genius. Our imagination is triggered by little things that draw our attention to the greatest things.

Just when we think we have a handle on the world, we discover space. About the time we have some understanding of space, we are transported to galaxies and then, the universe unfolds before us and then, the possibility of the multiverse.

And we haven't even fully explained rainbows!

But we know that we do not know and we know that what we do not know contains vast possibilities and amazing opportunities. Our hearts are fixed on the many pots of gold for which we search.

Solomon, the wise king, referred to eternity in our hearts.

And so, it was and so, it is. We wake up to our dreams  as we cycle through the darkness. On the rainiest and cloudiest days, the sun breaks through and the rainbow appears.

Might our yearning and believing be an indication that there is reality behind our questions?

We have been persistent through the ages in our philosophical and theological ponderings and, for the most part, have not abandoned our musings about these matters.

It is not out of certainty that we always sing these songs, though some, through faith, approach some version of certainty called assurance. It is, and never can be, in the realm of intellect that we will settle all speculations.

"That which is of the flesh is flesh; that which is of the spirit is spirit."

What can be known consciously is overshadowed by that which can be known in spirit. Spirit and truth can often be seen holding hands and walking down the hall together.

It is not that intellect and spirit never meet. They can and they do. One need not abandon thought and reason to embrace faith. Even questioning faith is still faith. Sometimes faith is that gnawing sense that there is more to it all than we behold. It is a part of that which cannot be measured and cannot be verified in a controlled environment.

Even the observable cosmos does not always comply with the legitimate predictions of our pristine mathematical forecasts.

Yet, we keep singing about rainbows, those illusive refractions that have nothing to hid.

We are lovers and dreamers and we are yet to quantify or package those descriptions of ourselves.

They just are.