Make Rain

May 29 2012

Spring

fatally late.

We needed rain.

Parched ground

crunching underfoot,

last year’s leaves

winter deadfall.

The unnatural quiet

of homeless frogs, pinched blackflies,

who won’t last long

this dry.

Did someone pray?

Rend their garments

speak in tongues

repent their ways?

Or were we flimflammed

by some fast-talking scammer,

who vowed he could make rain

conjure salvation?

Or was it chance,

the long arm of the law

of averages,

this badly delayed

precipitation?

A deluge, a torrent

a biblical storm,

as if a dam broke

sluice-gates opened.

Manhole covers

rattled and popped.

Streets were awash

reservoirs bursting.

Little trickles

we’d never noticed before

overflowed

and swamped us.

Not seen anything like it

old-timers declared, nodding sagely.

Scientists shrugged

deferring to nature.

While the holy-rollers

gave thanks to the Lord,

who had clearly been moved by their prayers

and replied

with all His righteous might.

Unknowable, and all-knowing,

if intemperate

in intercession.

Atheists, and apostates

got soaked as well.

A magnanimous God

who rains down His gifts

not just on the saved, who serve Him,

but disbelievers

the undeserving.

To which I say

please, pray to your heart’s content.

But excuse us

if we seem ungrateful.

After a week of incessant rain, there was extensive flooding in the area.  Perhaps the apocryphal “100 year flood”; except that with climate change and all the variability that entails, I suspect 100 years is far too long to hope for.

As usual, I take another opportunity to bash religion. So please excuse the self-indulgence. But the thought crossed my mind that surely someone was praying for rain (among innumerable other things), and to them this must be incontrovertible proof that a well-intentioned creator does indeed answer prayer.  And I suppose this same someone explains the rather intemperate result with the usual disclaimer that God works his wonders in mysterious ways, of which mere mortals cannot possibly know.

So if you are a believer, this become a poem about the law of unintended consequences:   as in “be careful what you wish for …”. And a cautionary tale about the suspect theology of intercessionary prayer.

And for atheists like me, it becomes a sarcastic swipe at the irrationality of belief, the tautological fallacy of prayer.