$$CCMerlin&&ca141fd0-ac7f-11d1-97A3-006008273000&&92&&152&&10 New South Wales \map="rain song"="RAIN-SONG"\ Festival: The Power of \map="prayer"="PRAYER"\ by Father Paul Marshall, Parish Priest, Warragamba New South Wales. &&Acknowledge We know drought is biting when farmers begin selling stock, when growers in Silverdale and Luddenham just don't bother planting crops because dams are practically empty. Every day the capacity of Warragamba dam is measured, not just in 1% categories, but o.1% calculating the last drop. &&Explain Labels on products \map="apolojize"="apologise"\ for local produce being scarce admitting having to use imported produce because of the drought. &&Acknowledge The label on the Orange Juice we were drinking this morning \map="red"="read"\: 'Australian Fresh'. Normally it boasts all Australian juice. The label now says 'Mostly Australian Juice', contains 'some' imported juices. Do you see? Apart from Antarctica, &&Explain Australia is the driest continent in the world. &&Acknowledge Perhaps we haven't really woken up to this fact being coast-dwellers, used to feeling plenty of coastal rains, moist air streams and rain-laden clouds. &&Explain El Nino and La Nina has established itself in our minds, &&Acknowledge imagining our world climate as predictable and stable, with normal seasonal variations of temperature, rainfall and an occasional geological episode. &&Explain The massive earthquake on Boxing day 2004 off Indonesia reflects rather, an earth in dynamic movement: Huge continental plates crashing into one another, &&Acknowledge the Australian Tectonic Plate pushing northwards at about 10cm a year. We forget just how variable things can be and the immensity of nature. At the height of the ice Age 18,000 years ago, much of the world's water was locked up in ice-fields. The sea level was 150 metres lower than now, the Sydney shoreline lay up to 20 kilometers further out. The Ice age was an extremely \map="arrid"="arid"\ time. It was at this time Aboriginal people lived high in the Blue Mountains. Why? Because though relatively drier than now, the highlands must have received more rainfall than the low-lying Sydney basin. Eugene Stockton in 'Blue Mountains Dreaming' implies, between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the climate improved throughout Australia. Aboriginal people, water and living things they depended on, moved out of dry period havens and spread out into all parts of the vast land mass again. &&Search Perhaps long separated peoples met up again reforming links between communities across the continent. Interchange of trade items and ideas was possible again, playing an increasingly greater role in what we now know of Aboriginal Australia. One can't reflect on a theology of drought without looking at previous climatic history. The \map="archeeology"="archeology"\ of Aboriginal settlements going back tens of thousands of years through the ice-age calls us to ask today.... How do we respond to shifts in climate which are natural variations of the world? Aboriginal people survived by adaptation and flexibility of lifestyle, living simply and moving to where moister areas were. This present drought is forcing everyone to ask deeper questions about our relationship with the environment and lifestyle pre-conceptions. In parts of Africa, no more than 8 litres of water is used per person per day and no doubt that could be stretching it a bit. In Australia, we use 10 litres of fresh drinking water to flush as little as a few mills of urine out of the toilet. Our western minds tend to separate the sacred and profane into two distinct, often mutually exclusive world views and presume it's the mentality in others. This drought may force us to re-think our cosmology, our lifestyle and our sense of the Sacred. Aboriginal people have one single cosmology in which the material, natural world, is infused with the sacred. &&Explain As westerners, we treat the land as something to be exploited. Our land thirsts. For what do we really thirst? Jesus was thirsty and he came to a well in the desert area of Samaria. There, begins an engaging dialogue between our son of God Jesus and a Samarian Woman. &&Explain 'whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again' &&Acknowledge Jesus said ... 'But the water I will give you, wells up to eternal life ...'In other words, Jesus points us to a bigger reality. He points us to the 'Waters of Life'. We pray for rain, real physical rain which splashes, running off into our dry creek beds replenishing depleted water-tables, filling our farm dams, town dams, flowing into city water-supplies. We realise with all our engineering skills, with all our technological expertise, with all our predictive weather modeling and one of the largest urban dams in the world, Warragamba, that we are still at the mercy of nature. Nature, the world and the universe, is so much bigger than us, beyond our control. Like the Samarian woman at the well in Samaria 2,000 years ago, let this drought time open our eyes for God's continual call to 'The waters of Life': Matters of the heart. Physical thirst alerts us to the life-giving nature of water and how precious a resource it really is. But, there is a call to community and care here as well. We can all be called to work together to guard the fragility of our land and resources, to look after this fragile land like a parent looks after a child. We need responsible parenthood for our land. We don't inherit the land from our forebears, we borrow it from our children and children's children. We are 'Custodians of the Future'. When desire for selfish profits, exploitation of land and people, overturn the delicate ecological balance of nature, we destroy the dignity of unique human beings by treating ourselves as 'consumers' - not people. We pillage Creation! Is God holding back on rain? We, as partners with God in creation, I think, are the ones who have lost the plot, devastating forests and land. God probably hasn't deserted, us. Have we deserted God? Why are we inviting God to help us restore balance? Is this what we're praying for, that we might turn back to God? That we, with God, may help restore harmony together in the broken-ness of Creation, the broken-ness and drought in our own hearts? May our eyes be opened to see our unique place in Creation. Would God really hold back the rain? We, as partners with God in Creation, hold back our participation. We become self-centred about resources that we forget to share our blessings with others and honor God in the sacredness of Creation. With Jesus at the well, let us say; 'I am Thirsty'. This is what we can pray for. That we may turn back to God. That we, with God, may help restore harmony in the broken-ness of creation, the broken-ness and drought in our own hearts. May our eyes be opened to see this unique place in Creation and walk again in cheerful partnership with The Creator. thankyou \map="father"="Fr"\. Paul (slightly edited) Pray for... \map="rain"="R A I N"\. Here on earth, let God's work, truly be our own'.