Praying for Rain

A drought is upon us.  Hot, dry days follow one after another like dusty elephants looking for a watering hole. No rain is forecast for the next 8 days, and last week’s teasing sprinkles seem like a cruel joke.  The river below our house is mostly dry and has been for weeks.  By ten o’clock, it’s too hot to work outside. In this searing heat, I worry for the birds, the bats, the trees, even the bugs.

Our acequia is in repartimiento, the time when the water is carefully allocated between the traditional irrigation ditches that share the Rio Embudo.  I have been allotted 5 hours of watering time from 1 am to 6 am, once every ten days. It is not enough. At least I am not trying to survive by farming. My orchard has no fruit due to a late freeze, but I want to keep my trees alive.  The native plants in my pollinator field will survive as they’ve done for millennia. But the flowers that feed the butterflies may not bloom.

  Last night I awoke to my alarm, rose, and went to open the acequia for my turn. As I walked up the path to the headgate, I gazed at the Milky Way, named by our ancestors for its resemblance to a spray of milk from a Goddess's breasts. I thought of women in drought-stricken lands whose babies go hungry when their milk dries up.  All living things depend upon water that falls from the sky.  I understand why people petition God for rain. 

I don’t believe in prayers of petition. Too many links in the long chain of cause and effect leading to climate disaster result from unrestrained human behavior, from overgrazing and deforestation, to the burning of coal, oil, and gas, leading to a runaway feedback spiral. We willfully disrupt the hydrological cycle and heat the planet with fossil fuels, squandering the planet's last chance to avoid a brutal reckoning with climate change. 

  I climb the steps to the headgate and shine my flashlight down into the meager bit of water flowing by in the muddy ditch.  I bend down to turn the wheel, letting the water flow into my orchard. Rather than the loud cascade I’m accustomed to hearing in normal times, trickles and gurgles tell me the acequia will not deliver as much water as my trees need. Still, I take my share and give thanks for it. Tomorrow will be hot and windy.  Fire danger is great.  It’s better to have the land around my home even slightly wet.  I might not get another opportunity.

I am tired of lamenting, but I can’t bring myself to write from righteous anger or fear. Whether at the wars in the Middle East, the corruption in the White House, or the destruction of the Voting Rights Act, there are too many travesties to enumerate. There are too many threats to give each one its due trembling. Every day, I plan to read at least one of the many news stories, blog posts, and op-eds that arrive in my inbox, written by people who are informed, thoughtful, distressed, and outraged. Then I methodically delete most of them, unable to concentrate on yet more calamity. Occasionally, I can manage to read an essay on what we must do if sane, humanistic proponents of democracy ever sit in power again. But even those leave me in a state bordering on despair.

Thus, I’ve increased my sitting time each day to the amount I know I need. I've indulged in “Grantchester” on PBS and “Outlander” on Audible. I’m rereading The Mind of Clover by Robert Aiken and a biography of my old Zen Master, Father Pat Hawk, Roshi, Across the Empty Sky, by Helen Amerongen. I talk on the phone with old friends from far away, some of whom have wisdom to share, and have lunch with friends I love who live nearby.  I practice Tai Chi, take walks, do yoga, and play my mbira.    I’m learning more about the songs of the birds nesting here. I look for their nests. I practice gratitude when I find an active nest. I do small, kind things for people who need small, kind things done for them.

None of this will bring rain or stop the perpetrators of evil. Nothing I do can accomplish those ends. I hold to the hope that embracing each day, even the hot ones when I have to be inside with the blinds drawn, will keep me on the path of peace and acceptance. And I need peace, acceptance, love, and unity in my deep heart’s core, especially now in this time of drought. I must keep faith that rain will eventually fall, and that, in the future, probably long after I am dead, humanity will learn what we need to know to preserve life for the numberless beings on this precious planet.