ramblings from an aging mind

Can anyone explain why when you get older and can’t remember why you walked into a room, details of insignificant things from 25 years ago just pop into your head uninvited. Phone numbers of old junior-high girl friends. Haven’t dialed them or thought of them for 25 years, but could pick up the phone right now and say hello to their parents without a hesitation on the keypad. I guess they’re not really uninvited. It’s just that they’re invited by a third party. Some arrangement of numbers will trigger the memory, maybe an answer on the kids’ math homework. I can’t remember what my zip code was for the first two years I was married, but not to worry, give me 10 more years and it will just pop into my head for no reason.
Usually it’s a song lyric that pops into my head though. You’ve had to deal with this in two recent posts and several older ones. Some “now” thing will trigger an old tune from the past and it just lies there in my ear until another nudges it off the edge. There used to be a television series where a guy thinks of a movie scene for every single thing that anyone says or does. I can’t remember the name of that show, but that is me – only with songs. Some of you noticed this about me long before I ever did. You’ve given me a hard time.
But I think there is also a fourth party involved. Usually the songs that seem to be randomly conjured by some unwitting thought stimulus, seem to be connected to more of the now situation. Or perhaps, I just manipulate their meanings and apply them to my current stuff as I did last week when I confused Dave with my manipulation of the Bob Seger. Some of these songs could not possibly have had this kind of context in my life way back in the day. I’m fascinated that they come back and speak into the present with meaning that they never had before. If plain old human expression can hang out and mean something after so long, imagine what the scripture can do when we take David’s advice and meditate on it and fill our minds with it and store it and wait for the Spiritus Sanctus to bring it to life in our moments.
Most recently, like one hour ago, I’m walking D and E out to their jeep and decide to hang on the porch for a moment. I’m listening to the fine drizzle (so light yet endless, like a soft spring rain – an English rain [but I digress]) in the yard and the drips down the drainpipes at the side of the porch. I’m thinking about recent blogs about sharing burdens, empathy, and prayer. I’ve just today acquired a new burden to share and desire to encourage. A terribly obscure song pops into my head:

It's raining outside
But that's not unusual
But the way that I'm feeling
Is kind of unusual
I guess you could say
The clouds are moving away
Away from your days
And into mine

(I’ll buy you a cup of joe if you can identify that song and its source)
At first I think it’s just the rain that brings that 32 year-old obscure song to mind. But then I realize what I could not have known back then – it’s about sharing burdens and empathy.
Which stimulus calls to mind such an old and obscure commentary? Is it the heavenly tears that nourish the parched earth, or the sharing of tears that lightens the burdens of both the bearer and the sharer? Praying for shared burdens brings one to his knees where he can also be ministered to, can be encouraged, convicted and rid of hidden goo that he was unaware of or had hidden from himself.
Rain down. Wash me. Pour out. Run-off. Spill over. Splash on. Flood.

Back to the start, my heart is heavy
feels like its time to dream again
I see the clouds and yes, I’m ready
To dance upon this barren land
Hope in my hand

Do not shut the heavens, but open up our hearts