Years ago Kermit The Frog sang, “Why are there so many songs about rainbows? That’s part of what rainbows dooooooooo.”

This evening as I left the grocery store I walked into the tail end of one of those late day thunderstorms as the sun was coming back out, and there it was, a big rainbow. This certainly wasn’t my first time seeing a rainbow. I am pretty sure the people next to me had seen them before too. So, what causes us to pause in the rain and look into the sky at a rainbow. We not only look, we point urgently so the people with us see it before it disappears back into the thin air from where it came. What makes busy, practical people look and linger.

I think we, no matter now hard edged some of us have become in this material world, still believe in the magic. We may not admit it. Maybe it is a sense of wanting to believe but that sense of wonder and possibility is there in all of us and rainbows tap directly into it.

A quick visit to wikipedia tells me that “the rainbow, a natural phenomenon noted for its beauty and inexplicability, has been a favorite component of mythology throughout history. The Norse saw it as Bifrost; Judeo-Christian traditions signs it as a covenant with God not to destroy the world by means of floodwater. Finding a mythology that does not include the rainbow somewhere may be the true challenge. Whatever the culture or continent, our species’ earliest rainbow is the rainbow of the imagination. Whether as bridge, messenger, archer’s bow, or serpent, the rainbow has been pressed into symbolic service for millennia. The myriad rainbow bridges and myths built by the world’s peoples clearly tell us more about human hopes and fears than they do about nature’s rainbow.”

We each may have differing and contradictory beliefs about the rainbow but that is not the point. The point is that we each believe something in the first place and it has little to with science and refracting light and everything to do with magic, mystery and possibility. When we look at a rainbow we are confronted by the wonder of the world and the reality of our life. The magic happens when we allow our reality to be influenced by the wonder. My business continues to grow because of the intersection of wonder and reality. Had I focused on just the reality I wouldn’t have a business. If I was totally practical I would never get on a golf course again. But I do have a business and I do golf and I do believe in the magic.

I wish I could explain it but I guess if I could then it wouldn’t be magic. I know when I tap into it great things happen. You know this too. That is is why you look at Rainbows. Maybe that is why they are there, to remind us that the magic, although elusive, is real.

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