Today we pray for rain.
We pray for rain because we are parched. The land we live in and love is dry as a tinderbox. The leaves are curled and sere, and brittle grass crackles under our feet.
We pray for rain. Not just for our physical county and state and coast. We are, each of us, parched – emotionally, spiritually, and physically parched – as if we have been using every ounce of reserve available to us. Our wells are near dry.
And who is to blame? One could point fingers, but we would run out of fingers too quickly. It is enough to say that isolation, politics and plague, have all taken their toll. Mistrust, grief the memory of touch, All of these things. And everyday, the groundwater that supplied and nourished our lives drops lower. And this while we are being tested in ways we have not been tested before.
So let us open our cracked lips and pray for rain. Because we need it. Water is life. Mayim chayim. And there is a depletion happening at the cosmic level. We can feel it. As if the world is not able to sustain us in the way we are used to being sustained. We no longer have the buoyancy we had as a species; the word resilience has entered our lexicon just at the moment we no longer feel it.
Where I have been noticing this cosmic depletion most profoundly (and I've been checking this perception with friends and other clergy and hearing the same) is in the sheer number of deaths I have experienced this year. Friends, parents of friends, colleagues, teachers, classmates, community members. In a time of pandemic, death from the feared pathogen is, sadly, to be expected. But these have been waves of deaths from many other causes.
And this has me puzzled and worried. I am worried that our will to live is being depleted. Not that people are dying because they gave up. Although clearly the world has become less hospitable, and our assessment of what future we might look forward to has shifted.
But I'm talking about something beyond that. There is something about the usual flow of life through us and through this Creation that feels to be at risk. As if the life force that usually doesn't want to let go of us even when the cancer is Stage 4 or the debilitating illness is so advanced and painful – it is as if that life force cannot hold us with the same strong grip with which it has held us in the past.
Our bodies feel the loosened grip of this life force. And it is frightening.
So today let us pray for rain. Let us pray for this strong life flow to be restored; for the reservoirs of life to be refilled. So that we have a fighting chance when disease and disaster come knocking.
Our prayer needs to be loud and full-bodied. It needs to be beyond words. Our prayer needs to take the form not only of petition, but of commitment. We must recommit to life. Recommit to being part of this Creation. We must commit to staying alive. To being here to bring in the next era, whatever it is.
Our desire to live, our commitment to living, must be unconditional. It cannot be just if Biden and Harris win the election. We must be committed to living whatever happens next, good or bad. We have to grab the future and hold onto it strongly no matter what.
We need to pour forth our desire for life into our shared pool of being. Bless each other with the flow of life.
This will be what the Kabbalists called an it'aruta dil'tata – an awakening from below. Meaning that we prime the pump on our planet by pouring forth this commitment to life, and it will shake loose an it'aruta dil'eyla, an awakening on high, from which the life force will flow.
So while we pray for rain, let us pour forth rain. Let us sing our desire for life, for more life, into the thirsty universe. Flood ourselves with it. No fear. We know how to swim.
When we pray for rain, let us remember – so that we can sing it back into being – the plunk of the first raindrops striking our faces. The feel of racing outside to smell the rain in the air, to see the skies heavy with gray cloud. Remember the weight of rain falling harder and heavier; and the green smell it liberates from the dry grass.
Let us each be drenched in the flow of life, the desire for life, the dedication to life. Drenched until water is rolling into our eyes; our glasses steaming, our wool sweaters stinking, our feet slippery in wet socks.
Let it rain. Let us refill the reservoirs, replenish the groundwater of our lives. Let us be the rain, and may heaven, delighted, join us in our rain dance. Halleluyah shmey hashamayim v'hamayim asher meal hashamayim. “Sing praise, you heavens, and all you water holding up above the heavens.” Come join the fun.
And let all who are thirsty come to water and drink. Let the rivers flow. Let the dams break. Let there be life.