Calling For Rain

Early, when angels and demons duel over their charges, I woke, my legs singing with electricity. Blondie’s song, “Call me, call me any day or night. Cover me with kisses, roll me in designer sheets” crawled like an ear worm. But it wasn’t just her voice in those words.

I walked outside and looked toward humps of trees, reminding me of islands off the coast of Maine. We’d found safe harbor at our second parents’ home on a cove protected from the wild Atlantic. Orion was cocking his leg toward the western horizon. All day the fields had roared with dust. Corn stalks flew into the air, smeared the roadsides, as the big machines chiseled their fields.

Call me.

And so, I called. Clouds, wetter than the dry air, come. Let there be bold lightning strokes and thunder like tympani way high. Let us smell glorious petrichor, rising as soil and moisture meet. Let us hear the drops nickering against the windows, trotting along the driveway and into the fields, gray horses.

Roll me in designer sheets, glorious gray sheets of rain. Let me lift my face to kisses falling from a couple thousand feet.

But I could feel the earth tilt. I could feel the weight of sunrise, the weight of another sun-washed day, with no rain, and dust billowing around the men working their fields. Gravel pinched my feet.

Call me.

But I’ve said enough. Enough I said. Bring a front. Bring wet Gulf air. Bring the rain.

I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective. *

If you’d like to hear me read this on the WNIJ website, click here.

“I will come to you like the rain, the spring rain watering the earth,” (Hos 6:3) echoes as I think about this perspective. The Lord like rain comes as a promise after the people have been struck down, torn and broken, revived and raised up.

But it’s not just the people who were torn and struck down, it was Jesus himself, Jesus identifying with his people, torn and struck down. “After two days he will revive us; and on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him” (Hos. 6:2, ESV). It’s Jesus who is revived and with him, we are revived. On the third day we will be raised up, just as Jesus was when he rolled the stone away and walked out of the grave. I like to wonder if this also means that these days are millenniums, that maybe we’ll be revived here in the second millennium, that God like rain will be poured down and justice will come to the world.

And I also think of a passage in Deuteronomy that I practically memorized just as I arrived at college, back when the King James Version was what I knew: “And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full” (Deut 11: 13 - 15, KJV).

All God is asking is that the people: “Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them.” In this worldview people’s faithfulness to God and their relationship to the earth are intertwined. But of course, none of us take heed. I find myself distracted, my attention on the noise coming out of Washington. I turn on the TV to watch a Hollywood shoot em up, where bullets make the world right. I don’t want to, but I wake up, my heart hurting. If we do forget God, the heavens go quiet and the rains stop.

I’ve heard the essence of idol worship is trying to manipulate the gods into doing our bidding. A person could sacrifice their first born in order to make sure the rains come, and the land stays fertile. A person could sacrifice their child to ensure their dream comes true.

I know we’re not supposed to connect weather events to God’s judgement. If we do, we’re called blasphemers, arrogant, cruel beyond belief. “God doesn’t work that way,” shouts in our ears. But have we lost how God is closely tied with the natural world, or how the world is tied to our own behavior? When we can wreck the earth, when we mine it without regard to what’s left, when we act like we can change the weather, isn’t there a judgement embedded in the very earth we’ve abused or tried to control?

This past week I received the Rational Optimist newsletter with the title Honey Crank Up the Sun. The writers cheer lead assorted technological innovations to improve our life on this planet. When I opened it, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I’d always thought geoengineering was the stuff of conspiracy theory. That it was crazies who talk about seeding the clouds to make rain or dim the sun. But it’s not.

The newsletter reports, “Forget the old seeding methods of burning thousands of dollars in jet fuel to spray silver iodide into clouds.

“Rainmaker's drones are like high-tech rain whisperers, using radar tracking and artificial intelligence (AI) to find the perfect spots in clouds to trigger rainfall. It estimates it can do this for just $20 per hour.

“Rainmaker's ambition is massive: make rain as reliable as electricity. Sound far-fetched? Maybe. But what's truly unacceptable is telling our kids to deal with constant water restrictions and the possibility their homes might burn to the ground."

I imagine lasers like cattle prods poking the bellies of clouds to make rain on demand. What could go wrong?

Honey Crank Up the Sun also talks about giant mirrors sent into space and sending sunlight down to solar panels so they produce electricity all night long. This might improve life in the Arctic when winter days are so very short. What would that do to the nocturnal habits of wild life and farm animals?

The article also talks about talks spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to cool our atmosphere, mimicking the work of volcanoes. Do these geo-engineers not recall how these eruptions can cause worldwide famines?

Norway wants to pump cooler, deeper seawater into the warmer ocean to calm down hurricanes. Are we messing with climate and weather that is more finely tuned and alive than we imagine. What disasters will these geoengineers bring down on us? The Chiffon Margarine commercial might have some wisdom: “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”

We’re in a drought in our region that set up last summer, with the air so dry, if rain or snow tries to fall it dries before it hits the ground. Yesterday we were under a winter advisory, with 70% chance of precipitation, and nothing dropped more than a trace, that barely showed our tracks.

It’s getting so I long for rain or snow. Day after day the sun happily shines, or the clouds make pretty shapes but stay silent. This summer, dust billowed up when farmers plowed and harvested, when we picked up our hay.

Though I briefly got my wish about the time that I recorded my perspective for WNIJ. It rained hard enough to leave puddles in the driveway and paddock. We closed Mrs. Horse in the barn because the rain was being driven by wind, which is difficult weather for a horse who has been blowing her coat like it was March. I cut my walk short, just enough to give the dogs a potty break. My hat, my coat, my legs were so wet I had to hang them over the tub. The dogs patted water on the floor that I toweled up as I rubbed them dry.

This winter I have missed watching snow because I miss feeling cozy. I miss the ground clothed like a bride in her wedding dress, but both rain and snow make work. Both rattle my routine. Rain cuts my walk short. Snow finds its way into the barn unless we plug the holes around the doors. I jam bales of shavings in the cracks and empty bags in the creases. Snow can sneak through tiny cracks. Now with the barn cats, we need to leave the door cracked so they can come and go, so more snow will find its way in the barn. After a good snow, Bruce climbs on the tractor in the cold to plow our driveway and yard. I should be grateful we’ve had little snow, but I miss it.

*I wrote the above perspective for last year’s Writing x Writers Online Generative Short Short Contest and earned Honorable Mention and this perspective. If I recall correctly the prompt was to name an astronomical body, an ocean, and a woman’s pop band. This is what I came up with. The winners received free tuition for a weekend workshop with Pam Houston, Carolyn Forche and another writer. Forche was my MFA thesis advisor so I thought it might be a kick to see her again. I did not attend because I didn’t care to pay the reduced tuition fee.

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