Rain In A Drought Quotes

I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror – The wide brown land for me!

I like storms. Thunder torrential rain, puddles, wet shoes. When the clouds roll in, I get filled with this giddy expectation. Everything is more beautiful in the rain. Don't ask me why. But it’s like this whole other realm of opportunity. I used to feel like a superhero, riding my bike over the dangerously slick roads, or maybe an Olympic athlete enduring rough trials to make it to the finish line. On sunny days, as a girl, I could still wake up to that thrilled feeling. You made me giddy with expectation, just like a symphonic rainstorm. You were a tempest in the sun, the thunder in a boring, cloudless sky. I remember I’d shovel in my breakfast as fast as I could, so I could go knock on your door. We’d play all day, only coming back for food and sleep. We played hide and seek, you’d push me on the swing, or we’d climb trees. Being your sidekick gave me a sense of home again. You see, when I was ten, my mom died. She had cancer, and I lost her before I really knew her. My world felt so insecure, and I was scared. You were the person that turned things right again. With you, I became courageous and free. It was like the part of me that died with my mom came back when I met you, and I didn’t hurt if I knew I had you. Then one day, out of the blue, I lost you, too. The hurt returned, and I felt sick when I saw you hating me. My rainstorm was gone, and you became cruel. There was no explanation. You were just gone. And my heart was ripped open. I missed you. I missed my mom. What was worse than losing you, was when you started to hurt me. Your words and actions made me hate coming to school. They made me uncomfortable in my own home. Everything still hurts, but I know none of it is my fault. There are a lot of words that I could use to describe you, but the only one that includes sad, angry, miserable, and pitiful is “coward.” I a year, I’ll be gone, and you’ll be nothing but some washout whose height of existence was in high school. You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all those things, and I loved you. But now? You’re a fucking drought. I thought that all the assholes drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.

People pray for rain, then complain about the flood. They pray for it to stop raining, then bitch about the drought.

You told me once of the plants that lie dormant through the drought, that wait, half-dead, deep in the earth. The plants that wait for the rain. You said they'd wait for years, if they had to; that they'd almost kill themselves before they grew again. But as soon as those first drops of water fall, those plants begin to stretch and spread their roots. They travel up through the soil and sand to reach the surface. There's a chance for them again.

Some days words flow through me like the Nile, and other days I’m as dry as the Sahara. I’m afraid you’ve caught me in the middle of a drought, but I’m confident rain shall fall again.

You told me once of t he plants that lie dormant through the drought; that wait, half dead, deep in the earth. The plants that wait for the rain. You said they'd wait for years, if they had to; that they'd almost kill themselves before they grew again. But as soon as those first drops of water fall, those plants begin to stretch and spread their roots. They travel up through the soil and sand to reach the surface. There's a chance for them again. One day they'll let you out of that dry, empty cell. You'll return to the Separates, without me, and you'll feel the ram once more. And you'll grow straight, this time, towards this sunlight. I know you will." - Gemma

Nature appears to take pleasure in playing games with humans, overwhelming them with torrential rains one year, only to subject them to scorching heatwaves the next!

Humans and nature can never be friends! Nature will never hesitate to starve you in the drought, drown you in the rain, burn you in the sun, and kill you with an earthquake, a hurricane or a disease; and as such, nature should always be seen as an enemy not a friend.

I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains.

...trust in Creation which is made fresh daily and doesn’t suffer in translation. This God does not work in especially mysterious ways. The sun here rises and sets at six exactly. A caterpillar becomes a butterfly. A bird raises its brood in the forest and a greenheart tree will only grow from a greenheart seed. He brings drought sometimes followed by torrential rains and if these things aren’t always what I had in mind, they aren’t my punishment either. They’re rewards, let’s say for the patience of a seed.

Life moved, as inconstant and fickle as Wind Baby, frolicking, sleeping, weeping, but never truly still. Never solid or finished. Always like water flowing from one place to the next. Seed and fruit. Rain and drought, everything traveled in a gigantic circle, an eternal process of becoming something new. But we rarely saw it. Humans tended to see only frozen moments, not the flow of things.

I learned perhaps more than any university could ever teach me. I learned that the world revolves around money. There are values and virtues and morals; there are relationships and trust and love---and all of that is important. Money, however, is more important and it is dripping all the time, like precious water. Some drink deep; others thirst. Without money, you shrivel and die. The absence of money is drought in which nothing can grow. Nobody knows the value of water until they've lived in a dry, dry place---like Behala. So many people, waiting for the rain.

We were in the middle of a drought, and it hadn’t rained for months and months and months. And that’s when I knew that your father was like the rain. He was a miracle.

Beauty means this to one person, perhaps, and that to another. And yet when any one of us has seen or heard or read that which to him is beautiful, he has known an emotion which is in every case the same in kind, if not in degree; an emotion precious and uplifting. A choirboy's voice, a ship in sail, an opening flower, a town at night, the song of the blackbird, a lovely poem, leaf shadows, a child's grace, the starry skies, a cathedral, apple trees in spring, a thorough-bred horse, sheep-bells on a hill, a rippling stream, a butterfly, the crescent moon -- the thousand sights or sounds or words that evoke in us the thought of beauty -- these are the drops of rain that keep the human spirit from death by drought. They are a stealing and a silent refreshment that we perhaps do not think about but which goes on all the time....It would surprise any of us if we realized how much store we unconsciously set by beauty, and how little savour there would be left in life if it were withdrawn. It is the smile on the earth's face, open to all, and needs but the eyes to see, the mood to understand.

It was July. Crazy hot and dry. It hadn't rained in, like, sixty days. Drought hot. Scorpion hot. Vultures flying circles in the sky hot.

Droughts especially appear to have accompanied the spirits of the dead in bee-form, and for this reason the honey offering was almost always customary in rain-magic, and the power of predicting rain was attributed to the bee.

Humanity and nature can never be friends! Nature will not hesitate to starve you in a drought, drown you in the rain, scorch you under the sun, or cause your demise through earthquakes, hurricanes, or diseases. Hence, nature should always be perceived as an adversary, not an ally.

Be not defeated by the rain, Nor let the wind prove your better. Succumb not to the snows of winter. Nor be bested by the heat of summer. Be strong in body. Unfettered by desire. Not enticed to anger. Cultivate a quiet joy. Count yourself last in everything. Put others before you. Watch well and listen closely. Hold the learned lessons dear. A thatch-roof house, in a meadow, nestled in a pine grove's shade. A handful of rice, some miso, and a few vegetables to suffice for the day. If, to the East, a child lies sick: Go forth and nurse him to health. If, to the West, an old lady stands exhausted: Go forth, and relieve her of burden. If, to the South, a man lies dying: Go forth with words of courage to dispel his fear. If, to the North, an argument or fight ensues: Go forth and beg them stop such a waste of effort and of spirit. In times of drought, shed tears of sympathy. In summers cold, walk in concern and empathy. Stand aloof of the unknowing masses: Better dismissed as useless than flattered as a "Great Man". This is my goal, the person I strive to become.

Terrible drought, crops dead, sheep dying. Spring dried up. No water. The Hopi, and the Christian, maybe the Moslem, they pray for rain. The Navajo has the proper ceremony done to restore himself to harmony with the drought. You see what I mean. The system is designed to recognize what's beyond human power to change, and then to change the human's attitude to be content with the inevitable." - Tony Hillerman, Sacred Clowns, 1993

There’s a great drought in my village. People are dying. The price of rice and pulses has rocketed. There is no water anywhere. And here, people are complaining about the rain...

Kissing Storm made her feel like a weed that had never known anything but drought and his lips were a summer rain, flooding her with a life energy that pushed her to grow.

In the end, we are two people who exchanged our love story for broken souls. I’m no longer his rain. He’s no longer the drought. We’ve become a tsunami, and left in its path of our destruction are two little cups of sunshine striving to keep shining. Ultimately, our children pay the price for our mistakes.

He knew by heart every individual clump of bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of its early summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell.

I come from east Africa, Kenya, where people die of starvation because of drought. There is never enough rain for the crops or the animals. But here in the Congo, they have all the rain they need, rivers full of fish, and soil that is unbelievably rich. If you stand still here in the bush you can actually see plants growing around you, the growth is that powerful, that strong. And yet somehow people still manage to go hungry here because of the chaos, the bad management.

We don’t do big magic. Lucinda’s the only one. It’s too dangerous.” “What’s dangerous about ending a storm?” “Maybe nothing, maybe something. Use your imagination.” “Clear skies would be good. People could go outside.” “Use your imagination,” Mandy repeated. I thought. “The grass needs rain. The crops need rain.” “More,” Mandy said. “Maybe a bandit was going to rob someone, and he isn’t doing it because of the weather.” “That’s right. Or maybe I’d start a drought, and then I’d have to fix that because I started it. And then maybe the rain I sent would knock down a branch and smash in the roof of a house, and I’d have to fix that too.” “That wouldn’t be your fault. The owners should have built a stronger roof.” “Maybe, maybe not. Or maybe I’d cause a flood and people would be killed. That’s the problem with big magic. I only do little magic

There is love to overcome hate; generosity can diminish greed; truthfulness can reveal the lies in the same way the wind dries the flood and rains end the drought.

INDIAN wisdom says our lives are rivers. We are born somewhere small and quiet and we move toward a place we cannot see, but only imagine. Along our journey, people and events flow into us, and we are created of everywhere and everyone we have passed. Each event, each person, changes us in some way. Even in times of drought we are still moving and growing, but it is during seasons of rain that we expand the most—when water flows from all directions, sweeping at terrifying speed, chasing against rocks, spilling over boundaries. These are painful times, but they enable us to carry burdens we could never have thought possible.

This hope might have appeared to me like a cloud the size of a man’s fist in a vast open sky, in the middle of the desert, in the middle of a drought …
But there was rain in that cloud.

The sky and the earth, The night and the light, The heat and the cold, The rain and the drought; Those are my demigods. But the road, The road is my mistress. Devious and open, Harsh and nurturing, She seduces me with love And dares me with death In equal measure. Just like any good woman.

A priest is not somebody who knows how to perform the rain dance and end the drought. A priest is somebody who knows how to justify why the rain dance failed, and why we must keep believing in our god even though he seems deaf to all our prayers.

The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects … Snub-nosed monsters, raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses. That man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was a part of the monster, a robot in the seat … The driver could not control it – straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the ‘cat, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow gotten into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him – goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor – its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with blades – not plowing but surgery … The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

I could reply. I could tell him that a metaphor is inadequate in the face of a bloodbath. That a Platonic inclination for dying doesn't balance out the serious decision to kill. That through the ages there has never been a great historical infamy committed for which there couldn't be found a symbol just as big, to justify it. That, in consequence, we would do well to pay attention to great certainties, to great invocations, to the great 'droughts' and 'rains'. That the temper of our most violent outbursts might benefit from a shade less enthusiasm. I could reply. But what good would it do? I have a simple, resigned, inexplicable sensation that everything that is happening is in the normal order of things and that I am awaiting a season that will come and pass -- because it has come and passed before.

I looked at her again. She lay still now, her face pale against the pillow, her eyes large and dark and empty as rain barrels in a drought. One of her small five-fingered thumbless hands picked at the cover restlessly. There was a vague glimmer of doubt starting to get born in her somewhere. She didn't know about it yet. It's so hard for women - even nice women - to realise that their bodies are not irresistible.

Love was like rain; there could be periods of drought when it seemed that love would never return, would never make its presence felt again. In such times, the heart could harden, but then, just as droughts broke, so too could love suddenly appear, and heal just as quickly and completely as rain can heal the parched land.

Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf. For here were no long, straight furrows, such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth of the coastal plantations. The rolling foothill country of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to keep the rich earth from washing down into the river bottoms. It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.

[She] had sounded like the rain. Sometimes storms, sometimes light patters, sometimes the sweet, lashing gales after a long drought. Sometimes even the kind that came with rainbows. The kind you wanted to feel on your face while you held the rest of your body underwater in the summer sea. Rain could be so warm. No one ever really talked about that.

Milli Vanilli blamed it on the rain. But I’m a farmer, so I blame it on the drought.

There are often many people dying from thirst while many people are running for dear life away from the rain.

The earth was thirsty, with the memories of trees long cut, and it’s surface hardened, that long since rain soaked.

Her laugh is as refreshing as the first rains after a season of drought.

At 6:15 she was standing on her front porch watering gardenias and watching another line of thunderstorms split and go around her. The same thing happened almost every day. Some days they came so close all she could smell was the rain. The wind whipped up dust from the fields until it drove like buckshot into the shuddering mesquites, and Clara Nell started to pray. 'Jesus,' she whispered. 'Jesus, Jesus....' But the only thing that came out of the sky was her topsoil. Every day the wind took a little more, and it hadn't rained in almost a year.

And so fate—if you can call it that—changed course over the rainforest canopy, and kindnesses and miracles poured like quenching rain after a drought. Such is the nature of happy endings.

I decided then to tell Artichoke to be ugly. To make herself as ugly as possible and not worry too much about beauty or what anyone thought of her. To be unpainted, to live in the breeze and stand under waterfalls and not be worried over the height of mountains, of quiet trails deep in the woods. To not be scared of roads slick with rain, of valleys dry in drought. I'd tell her 'no fear' and she'd know it was the deepest truth and she would be everything I was not. She would be wild and free. And I wouldn't worry because I knew the secret. That through all of her ugliness, all her hiking and running and jumping and falling and getting back up and saying no and saying what she wanted, her scraped hands, her freckled skin, her smart brain, she would of course be beautiful.

The Fairy Godmother sat beside him. “You as well,” she said. “You weren’t at home, so I figured I would find you here. Are you having trouble writing this evening?” “Unfortunately so,” Hans said. “Some days words flow through me like the Nile, and other days I’m as dry as the Sahara. I’m afraid you’ve caught me in the middle of a drought, but I’m confident rain shall fall again.” “I have no doubt,” the Fairy Godmother

It's hard to think of the divide where I grew up as a watershed. The creeks are dry most of the year, rainfall is undependable at best, and folks in one river system are always trying to steal water from another.

I bet you never guessed that my ass was once a small-town wonder. That the triceratops went nuts when I danced. How once, after weeks of drought, I walked through my brother’s laughter just to feel the rain. I was made to die but I’m here to stay.

Ignorance of nature’s ways led people in ancient times to invent gods to lord it over every aspect of human life. There were gods of love and war; of the sun, earth, and sky; of the oceans and rivers; of rain and thunderstorms; even of earthquakes and volcanoes. When the gods were pleased, mankind was treated to good weather, peace, and freedom from natural disaster and disease. When they were displeased, there came drought, war, pestilence, and epidemics. Since the connection of cause and effect in nature was invisible to their eyes, these gods appeared inscrutable, and people at their mercy. But with Thales of Miletus (ca. 624 BC–ca. 546 BC) about 2,600 years ago, that began to change. The idea arose that nature follows consistent principles that could be deciphered. And so began the long process of replacing the notion of the reign of gods with the concept of a universe that is governed by laws of nature, and created according to a blueprint we could someday learn to read.

EVERYWHERE I TURNED, EVERYWHERE I went, everybody had something to say about love. Mothers, fathers, teachers, singers, musicians, poets, writers, friends. It was like the air. It was like the ocean. It was like the sun. It was like the leaves on a tree in summer. It was like the rain that broke the drought. It was the soft sound of the water flowing through a stream. And it was the sound of the crashing waves against the shore in a storm. Love was why we fought all our battles. Love was what we lived and died for. Love was what we dreamed of as we slept. Love was the air we wanted to breathe in when we woke to greet the day. Love was a torch you carried to lead you out of darkness. Love took you out of exile and carried you to a country called Belonging.

It is man's intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts. ... Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the rain is being withheld by evil spirits, or as punishment for its transgressions. Therefore you never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. No horse, for example would kill one of its foals to make the wind change direction. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough.

Elves live a long time, Ciri. By our time scale they are almost eternal. They thought humans were something that would pass, like a drought, like a heavy winter, or a plague of locusts, after which comes rain, spring, a new harvest. They wanted to sit it out. Survive.

I can't save you the way you want me to. But I can tell you what I feel. It's not much. But it may give you a chance. You told me once of the plants that lie dormant through the drought, that wait, half-dead, deep in the earth. The plants that wait for the rain. You said they'd wait for years, if they had to; that they'd almost kill themselves before they grew again. But as soon as those first drops of water fall, those plants begin to stretch and spread their roots. They travel up through the soil and sand to reach the surface. There's a chance for them again.

We are born somewhere small and quiet and we move toward a place we cannot see, but only imagine. Along our journey, people and events flow into us, and we are created of everywhere and everyone we have passed. Each event, each person, changes us in some way. Even in times of drought we are still moving and growing, but it is during seasons of rain that we expand the most-when water flows from all directions, sweeping at terrifying speed, chasing against rocks, spilling over boundaries. These are painful times, but they enable us to carry burdens we could never have thought possible.

Inland rain requires trees. Rain clouds on their own cannot travel more than 400km from the sea, so rain in the centre of a continent – the very rain that creates the central forest of the Amazon for example – requires continuous forest to the coast. Around half the rain that falls on the Amazon comes from its trees. As every school geography student knows, water evaporates from the sea, then falls as rain on coastal forest. Those trees ‘breathe out’ water vapour, which creates new clouds that travel further inland in so-called ‘flying rivers’. Crucially, this is how water reaches the soy and corn plantations in central and western Brazil. Once you destroy the forest you get less rain. A 2019 study showed that the rainy season in the state of Mato Grosso had become a month shorter in a decade,41, 42 and many of the major soy farms in Brazil are now suffering from the very drought that they have caused.

It is not uncommon for people to prefer to believe the bullshit that global warming is a hoax than to accept the facts that icebergs are melting, floods and droughts are increasing, the Amazon rain forest is disappearing, and dangerous methane gases are bubbling up from the ocean floor all because global temperatures are rising.

Mark Twain, merciless as always, parodied the government’s efforts: “Probable northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward, and points between, high and low barometer swapping around from place to place, probably areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning.

It is raining so the earth has turned mostly to mud, and I think of what the minister said when my brother died: “The rain comes and washes away his prints, so we can move on.” I wished for drought instead, so we wouldn’t lose every trace, but it rained for a week straight, and despite it being April, three feet of snow landed to make sure the job was done for good.

I was the muddled concoction of my father’s contradictions. The same man who warned me that “life is a bowl-a shit” was the channel to my bliss. The infection and the cure. He was, at once, the drought that left me parched and gasping, and the rain that nurtured the single blade of grass, pushing itself up from between the jagged cracks in the sidewalk, and into the sun.

But Hudson Taylor, young though he was, had learned to know God in a very real way. He had seen Him, as he wrote, quell the raging of a storm at sea, in answer to definite prayer, alter the direction of the wind, and give rain in a time of drought. He had seen Him, in answer to prayer, stay the hand of would-be murderers and quell the violence of enraged men. He had seen Him rebuke sickness in answer to prayer, and raise up the dying, when all hope of recovery seemed gone. For more than eight years he had proved His faithfulness in supplying the needs of his family and work in answer to prayer, unforeseen as many of those needs had been. How could he but encourage others to put their trust in the love that can not forget, the faithfulness that can not fail?

Love alone brings order eternal, Order brought by law is shortlived. Only selfless lovers make good lawmakers, All others are just playing make belief. Let love come as apocalypse and wipe out, All that is rigid, all that is prehistoric. Welcome love into your life as a purifying force, Let it bring you to life anew and terrific. Life is terrific when life has love but, To have love and to have lover ain't the same. Lover isn't one who has someone to love them back, But one who radiates love, despite living in drought without rain. None knows the value of rain, But the land of eternal drought. None knows the value of love, But the heart that loves despite hurt. Only the one who knows pain, Can love another without gain. Only the heart that knows hurt, Can help another without rain.

NASA documents from 1966 confirm the United States weather modification programme with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars and in the 1990s the US military was publishing papers expounding the war possibilities of weather manipulation, or 'geoengineering' as it is also known. American scientist J. Marvin Herndon described in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2015 how weather modification has been happening for decades and includes the 'make mud, not war' programme named Project Popeye to create monsoon-scale rain during the Vietnam War. US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report published in 1996 explained how artificially-generated floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes 'offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary'.

THE MEETING" "Scant rain had fallen and the summer sun Had scorched with waves of heat the ripening corn, That August nightfall, as I crossed the down Work-weary, half in dream. Beside a fence Skirting a penning’s edge, an old man waited Motionless in the mist, with downcast head And clothing weather-worn. I asked his name And why he lingered at so lonely a place. “I was a shepherd here. Two hundred seasons I roamed these windswept downlands with my flock. No fences barred our progress and we’d travel Wherever the bite grew deep. In summer drought I’d climb from flower-banked combe to barrow’d hill-top To find a missing straggler or set snares By wood or turmon-patch. In gales of March I’d crouch nightlong tending my suckling lambs. “I was a ploughman, too. Year upon year I trudged half-doubled, hands clenched to my shafts, Guiding my turning furrow. Overhead, Cloud-patterns built and faded, many a song Of lark and pewit melodied my toil. I durst not pause to heed them, rising at dawn To groom and dress my team: by daylight’s end My boots hung heavy, clodded with chalk and flint. “And then I was a carter. With my skill I built the reeded dew-pond, sliced out hay From the dense-matted rick. At harvest time, My wain piled high with sheaves, I urged the horses Back to the master’s barn with shouts and curses Before the scurrying storm. Through sunlit days On this same slope where you now stand, my friend, I stood till dusk scything the poppied fields. “My cob-built home has crumbled. Hereabouts Few folk remember me: and though you stare Till time’s conclusion you’ll not glimpse me striding The broad, bare down with flock or toiling team. Yet in this landscape still my spirit lingers: Down the long bottom where the tractors rumble, On the steep hanging where wild grasses murmur, In the sparse covert where the dog-fox patters.” My comrade turned aside. From the damp sward Drifted a scent of melilot and thyme; From far across the down a barn owl shouted, Circling the silence of that summer evening: But in an instant, as I stepped towards him Striving to view his face, his contour altered. Before me, in the vaporous gloaming, stood Nothing of flesh, only a post of wood.

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather." He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it." I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive." "Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile." "I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall." He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?" "Isn't that life?" He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?" "Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch. Where a father is murdered bacause he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family. In that world, it seems like it's raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched. Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they're drowing. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they'll come out of it all the stronger for it. What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her. Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

A Sonoran Desert village may receive five inches of rain one year and fifteen the next. A single storm may dump an inch and a half in the matter of an hour on one field and entirely skip another a few hours away. Dry spells lasting for months may be broken by a single torrential cloudburst, then resume again for several more months. Unseasonable storms, and droughts during the customary rainy seasons, are frequent enough to reduce patterns to chaos. The Papago have become so finely tuned to this unpredictability that it shapes the way they speak of rain. It has also ingrained itself deeply in the structure of their language. Linguist William Pilcher has observed that the Papago discuss events in terms of their probability of occurrence, avoiding any assumption that an event will happen for sure... Since few Papago are willing to confirm that something will happen until it does, an element of surprise becomes part of almost everything. Nothing is ever really cut and dried. When rains do come, they're a gift, a windfall, a lucky break.

For instance, a complete record of the Prayers for Rain and their results. Often he had stood on the steps of one of his little churches, his flock kneeling before him on the baked street. Often he had stretched his arms to the sky and declaimed the splendid ritual. Not often, but several times, he had felt the virtue enter him and seen the little cloud forming on the horizon. But there were many times when weeks went by . . . but why think of them? It was not himself he was trying to convince that rain and drought were wisely apportioned.

However, the widths of tree growth rings vary from year to year, depending on rain or drought conditions in each year. Hence the sequence of rings in a tree cross-section is like a message in the Morse code formerly used for sending telegraph messages; dot-dot-dash-dot-dash in the Morse code, wide-wide-narrow-wide-narrow in a tree ring sequence. Actually, the ring sequence is even more diagnostic and richer in information than the Morse code, because trees actually contain rings spanning many different widths, rather than the Morse code’s choice between only a dot or a dash.

It was a savagely red land, blood-coloured after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seemed to wait with age-old patience, to threaten with soft sights: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.

Energy doesn't speak English, Spanish or Chinese, but it does speak clearly. It speaks through the metaphors of our lived experiences, through the rain, floods, drought, earthquakes, excessive heat, unseasonable cold or the erupting volcanoes of nature. It communicates through the itches, pains, boils and pimples, through congestion, vertigo and backaches of the body. Energy speaks through our feelings that have nothing at all do with us, but are reflective of what is happening in the field. And, lastly, it speaks through synchronicities, coincidences and dreams that communicate messages which our conscious minds could not have known. This language of Energy, like any new tongue, is challenging.

Only one thing can save us. We have to increase our mastery of the world. All this damage has come about through our conquest of the world, but we have to go on conquering it until our rule is absolute. Then, when we’re in complete control, everything will be fine. We’ll have fusion power. No pollution. We’ll turn the rain on and off. We’ll grow a bushel of wheat in a square centimeter. We’ll turn the oceans into farms. We’ll control the weather—no more hurricanes, no more tornadoes, no more droughts, no more untimely frosts. We’ll make the clouds release their water over the land instead of dumping it uselessly into the oceans. All the life processes of this planet will be where they belong—where the gods meant them to be—in our hands. And we’ll manipulate them the way a programmer manipulates a computer.

One of his favorite examples, repeated several times in the thousands of pages of his writings, is of American experiments to bring rain in time of drought by shooting cannons into the air: a simple reorientation of aim from horizontal to vertical, from weapons of destruction to instruments of salvation. And this simple but radical change in orientation, from horizontal to vertical, returns throughout his writings to symbolize the reorientation needed in every field of activity: from a horizontal “zoomorphic” culture of human animals to a vertical, fully human stance of broad rational perspective; from a Ptolemaic, earth-centered worldview to a Copernican, cosmos-centered worldview; from the horizontal position of a body lying in its grave to the vertical position of the monument and mourner standing over that grave; from the horizontality of the railroad track to the verticality of the air balloon now and the spaceship tomorrow.

A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him— goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was nothing. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He

The weather has been strange in Japan this summer. The Rainey season, which usually winds down in the beginning of July, continued until the end of the month. It rained so much I got sick of it. There were torrential rains in parts of the country and a lot of people died. They say it’s all because of Global Warming. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Some experts claim it is, some claim it isn’t. There’s some proof that it is, some that it isn’t. But still people say that most of the problems the earth is facing are more or less due to Global Warming. When sales of apparel go down, when tons of drift wood wash up on the shore, when there are floods and droughts, when consumer prices go up—Most of the fault is ascribed to Global Warming. What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, “It’s all your fault.” At any rate, due to this villain that can’t be dealt with, it went on raining and I could hardly practice biking at all during July. It’s not my fault, it’s that villain’s.

The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not control it–straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent that tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him–goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did now know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor–its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with its blades–not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders–twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gear, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, and had no connection to the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not love or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

The children crowded about the women in the houses. What we going to do Ma? Where we going to go? The women said, We don’t know, yet. Go out and play. But don’t go near your father. He might whale you if you go near him. And the women went on with the work, but all the time they watched the men squatting in the dust–perplexed and figuring. The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects. They crawled over the ground, laying the track and rolling on it and picking it up. Diesel tractors, puttering while they stood idle; they thundered when they moved, and then settled down to a droning roar. Snub-nosed monsters, raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses. The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not control it–straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent that tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him–goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did now know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor–its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with its blades–not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders–twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gear, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, and had no connection to the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not love or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

I like storms. Thunder, torrential rain, puddles, wet shoes. When the clouds roll in, I get filled with this giddy expectation. Everything is more beautiful in the rain. Don't ask me why. But it’s like this whole other realm of opportunity. I used to feel like a superhero, riding my bike over the dangerously slick roads, or maybe an Olympic athlete enduring rough trials to make it to the finish line. On sunny days, as a girl, I could still wake up to that thrilled feeling. You made me giddy with expectation, just like a symphonic rainstorm. You were a tempest in the sun, the thunder in a boring, cloudless sky. I remember I’d shovel in my breakfast as fast as I could, so I could go knock on your door. We’d play all day, only coming back for food and sleep. We played hide and seek, you’d push me on the swing, or we’d climb trees. Being your sidekick gave me a sense of home again. You see, when I was ten, my mom died. She had cancer, and I lost her before I really knew her. My world felt so insecure, and I was scared. You were the person that turned things right again. With you, I became courageous and free. It was like the part of me that died with my mom came back when I met you, and I didn’t hurt if I knew I had you. Then one day, out of the blue, I lost you, too. The hurt returned, and I felt sick when I saw you hating me. My rainstorm was gone, and you became cruel. There was no explanation. You were just gone. And my heart was ripped open. I missed you. I missed my mom. What was worse than losing you, was when you started to hurt me. Your words and actions made me hate coming to school. They made me uncomfortable in my own home. Everything still hurts, but I know none of it is my fault. There are a lot of words that I could use to describe you, but the only one that includes sad, angry, miserable, and pitiful is “coward.” I a year, I’ll be gone, and you’ll be nothing but some washout whose height of existence was in high school. You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all those things, and I loved you. But now? You’re a fucking drought.

Man’s destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he’s done — almost. He hasn’t quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man’s conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we’ve attained, we don’t have enough mastery to stop devastating the world — or to repair the devastation we’ve already wrought. We’ve poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit — and we go on pouring our poisons into the world. We’ve gobbled up irreplaceable resources as though they could never run out — and we go on gobbling them up. It’s hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody’s really doing anything about it. It’s a problem our children will have to solve, or their children. Only one thing can save us. We have to increase our mastery of the world. All this damage has come about through our conquest of the world, but we have to go on conquering it until our rule is absolute. Then, when we’re in complete control, everything will be fine. We’ll have fusion power. No pollution. We’ll turn the rain on and off. We’ll grow a bushel of wheat in a square centimeter. We’ll turn the oceans into farms. We’ll control the weather — no more hurricanes, no more tornadoes, no more droughts, no more untimely frosts. We’ll make the clouds release their water over the land instead of dumping it uselessly into the oceans. All the life processes of this planet will be where they belong—where the gods meant them to be—in our hands. And we’ll manipulate them the way a programmer manipulates a computer. And that’s where it stands right now. We have to carry the conquest forward. And carrying it forward is either going to destroy the world or turn it into a paradise — into the paradise it was meant to be under human rule. And if we manage to do this — if we finally manage to make ourselves the absolute rulers of the world — then nothing can stop us. Then we move into the Star Trek era. Man moves out into space to conquer and rule the entire universe. And that may be the ultimate destiny of man: to conquer and rule the entire universe. That’s how wonderful man is.

One morning, a farmer knocked loudly on the door of a monastery. When Brother Porter opened the door, the farmer held out to him a magnificent bunch of grapes. “Dear Brother Porter, these are the finest grapes from my vineyard. Please accept them as a gift from me.” “Why, thank you! I’ll take them straight to the Abbot, who will be thrilled with such a gift.” “No, no. I brought them for you.” “For me? But I don’t deserve such a beautiful gift from nature.” “Whenever I knocked on the door, you opened it. When the harvest had been ruined by drought, you gave me a piece of bread and a glass of wine every day. I want this bunch of grapes to bring you a little of the sun’s love, the rain’s beauty and God’s miraculous power.” Brother Porter put the grapes down where he could see them and spent the whole morning admiring them: they really were lovely. Because of this, he decided to give the present to the Abbot, whose words of wisdom had always been such a boon to him. The Abbot was very pleased with the grapes, but then he remembered that one of the other monks was ill and thought: “I’ll give him the grapes. Who knows, they might bring a little joy into his life.” But the grapes did not remain for very long in the room of the ailing monk, for he in turn thought: “Brother Cook has taken such good care of me, giving me only the very best food to eat. I’m sure these grapes will bring him great happiness.” And when Brother Cook brought him his lunch, the monk gave him the grapes. “These are for you. You are in close touch with the gifts Nature gives us and will know what to do with this, God’s produce.” Brother Cook was amazed at the beauty of the grapes and drew his assistant’s attention to their perfection. They were so perfect that no one could possibly appreciate them more than Brother Sacristan, who had charge of the Holy Sacrament, and whom many in the monastery considered to be a truly saintly man. Brother Sacristan, in turn, gave the grapes to the youngest of the novices in order to help him understand that God’s work is to be found in the smallest details of the Creation. When the novice received them, his heart was filled with the Glory of God, because he had never before seen such a beautiful bunch of grapes. At the same time, he remembered the day he had arrived at the monastery and the person who had opened the door to him; that gesture of opening the door had allowed him to be there now in that community of people who knew the value of miracles. Shortly before dark, he took the bunch of grapes to Brother Porter. “Eat and enjoy. You spend most of your time here all alone, and these grapes will do you good.” Brother Porter understood then that the gift really was intended for him; he savoured every grape and went to sleep a happy man. In this way, the circle was closed; the circle of happiness and joy which always wraps around those who are in contact with the energy of love.

The children crowded about the women in the houses. What we going to do Ma? Where we going to go? The women said, We don’t know, yet. Go out and play. But don’t go near your father. He might whale you if you go near him. And the women went on with the work, but all the time they watched the men squatting in the dust–perplexed and figuring. ... The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects. They crawled over the ground, laying the track and rolling on it and picking it up. Diesel tractors, puttering while they stood idle; they thundered when they moved, and then settled down to a droning roar. Snub-nosed monsters, raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses. The man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not control it–straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent that tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him–goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did now know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor–its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with its blades–not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders–twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gear, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, and had no connection to the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not love or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

Allan Savory’s belief that drought and floods are man-made and therefore not inevitable opens the way for a different response. With this principle in mind, Grasslands, LLC, seeks to apply Holistic Management to thousands of acres of land, creating islands of ecological resilience with regard to the water cycle. So that perhaps when, say, an inordinately heavy rain comes in the spring, the pasture can absorb the water and there’s little runoff.

He tasted of the night and the wind. Despair. Desire. Destiny. He smelled of the rain after a hundred-year drought. She wanted to drink of him until her eternal thirst washed away.

When the rains finally came that drought year, Beka's Dad tried to persuade Lilla to concentrate on bougainvillea, crotons, and hibiscus. Plants like these grew easily and luxuriantly in the yard, but Lilla kept those trimmed back, and continued to struggle year after year in her attempt to cultivate roses like those she saw in magazines which arrived in the colony three months late from England.

Though outsiders always assumed Southern California is perpetually soft and subtropical with the perfect beach breeze, that sweet lick of sunshine, I knew the truth. The real Southern California exists in extremes. It's a place of spontaneous wildfires, and Santa Ana winds, and droughts that turn lakes into craters, splintering the earth like pottery that has crazed. It's a place of storms that transform streets into oceans, and I had no doubts now: the rain was coming.

The Roman Catholic view of prayer also must be opposed. Prayers to saints and to Mary amount to (1) a rejection of the accessibility of God in Christ (the only Mediator12) and (2) an ascription of attributes to glorified human beings that belong to God alone (omniscience, omnipresence, and sometimes omnipotence). Mary is called the “refuge of sinners,” the one who is to be asked to “guide” and “teach” us, who is “never implored in vain,” to whom “fervent prayers are to be addressed,” and the one whose “name alone comforts” (The Catholic Church the Teacher of Mankind). She solves the problems of rain and drought, famine and plague according to this book designed to instruct “the Catholic child at the mother’s knee” (Title page. The book was published in New York by the Office of Catholic Publications and bears the imprimatur of Archbishop Johannes W. Farley). On page 643 we read: Unfortunately, you are still mastered by many faults which prevent your becoming the pious and dutiful child God wishes you to be. To be able to cure yourselves of them you must implore the Blessed Virgin. Words almost fail in replying to such unrestrained idolatry. This concept of prayer puts Mary in God’s place. In fact it seems that according to this doctrine of prayer, God has delegated the answering of prayer to Mary. The response to make must be this: (1) Nowhere in all of the Scriptures can any such ideas be found. One will search in vain to find anyone at any time praying to Mary; nor is there any injunction to do so. Indeed, the Scriptures tell us to pray exclusively to God in Christ’s name (see vss. supra). And there is no model of prayer to Mary, any other human being, or to angels. The biblical picture differs considerably from the Roman Catholic one represented in these words: “…in his shortcomings, at each instant of his life, and in the hour of his death, the Christian turns to Mary. Her name alone comforts him, and gives him confidence” (ibid., p. 642). (2) When we pray to someone, we thereby ascribe to that one all of God’s attributes. For example, we must assume that the one to whom prayer is directed is omnipresent even to be able to hear the millions of prayers that are directed to him from all parts of the earth. But omnipresence is an attribute of God alone. Omnipotence likewise is required of the one to whom we pray; he must be able to answer all requests. Omniscience cannot be divorced from prayer either, since the answer must be given with reference to all other matters of all time (past, present and future). Does Mary have such attributes? Some think so (“Mary is all powerful, for she is the mother of God,” ibid., p. 642), others have not carefully thought through the issues involved.

Because people from Sacramento also were afraid of pretty much every type of weather—rain, snow, drought—it was all frightening

But Adam, looking out over his dry dust-obscured land, felt the panic the Eastern man always does at first in California. In a Connecticut summer two weeks without rain is a dry spell and four a drought. If the countryside is not green it is dying. But in California it does not ordinarily rain at all between the end of May and the first of November. The Eastern man, though he has been told, feels the earth is sick in the rainless months.

Everywhere I turned, everywhere I went, everybody had some3thing to say about love. Mothers, fathers, teachers, singers, musicians, poets, writers, friends. It was like the air It was like the ocean. It was like the sun. It was like the leaves on a tree in summer. It was like the rain that broke the drought. It was the soft sound of the water flowing through a stream. And it was the sound of the crashing waves against the shore in a storm. Love was why we fought all our battles. Love was what we lived and died for. Love was what we dreamed of as we slept. Love was the air we wanted to breathe in when we woke to greet the day. Love was a torch you carried to lead you out of darkness. Love took you out of exile and carried you to a country called Belonging

Tayo looked at the long white hairs growing out of the lips like antennas, he got the choking in his throat again, and he cried for all of them, for what he had done.

The Negeb, the south of Israel, is a vast desert. The watercourses of the Negeb are a network of ditches cut into the soil by wind and rain erosion. For most of the year they are baked dry under the sun, but a sudden rain makes the desert ablaze with blossoms. Our lives are like that—drought-stricken—and then, suddenly, the long years of barren waiting are interrupted by God’s invasion of grace.

She drew her knees to her chest, wondering who she was becoming. She tried to see herself in a month, in a year. Through springs and summers, autumns and winters. Through rain, drought, famine, plenty. Would she grow old here, living out her days as a hollow shell of who she had been? What was her true place among the Breccans? As hard as she tried, she couldn’t see the path she wanted to forge. But perhaps that was because she still didn’t know where she belonged.

Inland rain requires trees. Rain clouds on their own cannot travel more than 400km from the sea, so rain in the centre of a continent – the very rain that creates the central forest of the Amazon for example – requires continuous forest to the coast. Around half the rain that falls on the Amazon comes from its trees. As every school geography student knows, water evaporates from the sea, then falls as rain on coastal forest. Those trees ‘breathe out’ water vapour, which creates new clouds that travel further inland in so-called ‘flying rivers’. Crucially, this is how water reaches the soy and corn plantations in central and western Brazil. Once you destroy the forest you get less rain. A 2019 study showed that the rainy season in the state of Mato Grosso had become a month shorter in a decade,41, 42 and many of the major soy farms in Brazil are now suffering from the very drought that they have caused. Diverting rivers is not going to be possible, because the river water comes from rain.43 Hotter temperatures and droughts mean the southeastern Amazon has become a source of carbon dioxide rather than a carbon sink, and by some estimates the Amazon now produces more carbon than it stores.44, 45 So, the single greatest threat to Brazilian agribusiness is ... Brazilian agribusiness.

She drew her knees to her chest, wondering who she was becoming. She tried to see herself in a month, in a year. Through springs and summers, autumns and winters. Through rain, drought, famine, plenty. Would she grow old here, living out her days as a hollow shell of who she had been? What was her true place among the Breccans? As hard as she tried, she couldn’t see the path she wanted to forge. But perhaps that was because she still didn’t know where she belonged.

I am Them All (The Sonnet) They tell me to disown my words, or the law of christ will strike me down. They tell me to stop writing, or else, consciousness of krishna will bury me in ground. I look into their eyes and respond most gently - My child, waste not your breath in cautioning me, I am the spirit of Vyas that wrote krishna to life, I am the law of Christ that parted the Red Sea. I am in one, I am in all - I am the universe in a brain. I am creation, I am destruction, After a long drought, I am the monsoon rain. I am not a person, the person is merely a vessel. I am but expansion of the past giants, I am the spirit supreme, I am but love universal.

Kage stands two feet away drinking me in like he’s a cactus in a drought-ravaged desert and I’m the first spring rain.

About Kindness, This is just so much for my Soul, and to each one of you, beautiful Flickers of Light and Love. On this Amazing Day of Christmas, I want to send you all a bunch of Happiness and a heartful of My Prayers but above all a Truth that I feel I had the privilege of knowing long back, when I fell in love with God Almighty. The truth is Simple, Kindness is all that Matters. And by Kindness I don't mean the Kindness that looks differently on another but the One that comes with Empathy, the One that flows through Compassion, the One that roots in Love. We just have to understand that everyone is a beautiful person at heart, and no matter how a person behaves or how someone treats you, we just have to stay Kind and know that Somewhere out there Everything we do, has ripples, so let us create ripples in Kindness, in Grace, in Forgiveness, above all in Love. It is very very difficult to forgive a person who hurts us, but when you embody Kindness and practice Grace as an everyday habit, you soon understand how easy it becomes to forgive, because then you look at the Soul who hurt you as a Soul who is trapped in a blockchain of Karma, you understand that you need to release that Soul from your Karmic Cycle by forgiving and leaving it to God, and actually praying for the well-being of that Soul. Every Single Time, you cross path with a Stranger, wear a Smile, it doesn't matter if it is reciprocated or not, just know maybe you just infected a Soul with your Smile, after all like Pain, Happiness is Contagious. Let your Energy be that of Happiness, of Sunshine, you never know who needs your Soul's Rainbow in a drought of rain. Every time you find some way to do good, don't even think about it, just do it. Especially when you know that it cannot benefit you, because then you know in your Heart you did something just for Him. And that Feeling is beyond any achievement or success, because honestly nothing on Earth is as beautiful as the feeling of Kindness, of knowing that Every Single Day you wake up in this Earth to wear Kindness, that you have a reason to Exist, and that reason is to sprinkle Grace all around, to let every Soul you cross path with feel how Special they are, to Let the World know that Love is alive, that Kindness is the most beautiful prayer of God, the most amazing privilege granted to us. And so I pray to God, today and always, May the Spirit of Christmas be always the most Alive in the Act of Kindness, in the Very breath that we take, for Kindness is about Love and Love is the Root of this Universe in All Ways, Always. Love & Light, always - Debatrayee

Wings of fire It was a strange sight, That brought feelings of excitement and fright, A butterfly with wings of fire, One representing wishes and the other meant to hoist her every desire, There seemed to be no place where she could not go, I had never seen her before, not even long ago, Wherever she went, she set all flowers on fire, Creating blazing gardens of endless desire, Where wishes like pollen dust scattered everywhere, Lifted by the ever rising flames and then dispersed here and there, And wherever it fell, There was no beauty to be felt and no stories to tell, Because the flames turned the dust into a secret alchemy that resembled the inferno of hell, Gardens burned, lands were parched, it was a diabolic sight that no words can explain well, So, wherever the butterfly with wings of fire went, It left trails of fire and devastation, with nature’s will broken and completely bent, The butterfly used to be beautiful once, It loved to fly and freely dance, Until it was caught in a man made drought, Leaving it exhausted and distraught, As its wings stiffened and fell, And it began collapsing into the hell, There somehow she developed wings of fire, To claim her unfulfilled wishes and her every desire, And since then she has been on a rampage, Nature too does not want to contain her in the cage, Because she is avenging its losses, So, now she recklessly all heights and every length crosses, Wherever she goes the world of blazes and fires blooms, With just one prospect, that of gloom and endless dooms, Her desires are infinite, so her wings will never lose their fire now, There is only one way to stop her, via a kiss of love, But who would dare to kiss the wings of fire, Let alone the act, the very thought does scare and tire, Maybe the world, her world and our world will soon be reduced to cinders, And we can only hope that someday she forgives us all, her offenders, But behold the act of providence, Her only means of guidance, The wet drops of rain are soothing her hot and blazing wings, And as her wings regain their natural and colourful shades, she once again sings, Hopefully this spell of beauty lasts longer, And humans and beautiful butterflies will once again learn to live together!

Every drought is a rainfall somewhere else..for the eyes that cry, laughter blooms somewhere else. For every flower that goes to sleep, a bud opens somewhere else...

Every drought is a rainfall somewhere else....for the eyes that cry, laughter bursts somewhere else. For every flower that goes to sleep, a bud blooms somewhere else...

we can’t change what happened. We all have to live with the stupid decisions we make.

Drought-struck farmers pray for rain, in the express hope that the universe or owner thereof will hear the words and suspense the laws of meteorology for their benefit. Some, of course, actually believe just that, and for all anyone can prove they could be right.

once I heard her husky laughter pour out like rain after a drought

Teared She teared constantly - in mourning and in joy, in rain and in drought, in sleep or awake, in church or at home. The doctor said it was clogged ducts and drainage. But if you looked into her eyes you could guess at the secret of her unspoken loss. When she died and took that secret to the grave, but one could imagine, in the deep sockets that were once her eyes, a rheumy glint that even death could not erase.