by Father Paul Marshall,
Parish Priest, Warragamba: New South Wales.

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. Labels on products apologise for local produce being
scarce admitting having to use imported produce because of the drought.

The label on the Orange Juice we were drinking this morning 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, Australia is the driest continent in the world.
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.

El Nino and La Nina has established itself in our minds, imagining our world
climate as predictable and stable, with normal seasonal variations of
temperature, rainfall and an occasional geological episode.

The massive earthquake on Boxing day 2004 off Indonesia reflects rather,
an earth in dynamic movement: Huge continental plates crashing
into one another, 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 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 MountainsDreaming'
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.

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 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.

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.

'whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again'  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, overturns
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.
Father Paul.
(slightly edited)
Pray for... R A I N.    Here on earth, let God's work, truly be our own'.
Sing The Song (By New South Wales Children & David Ellis) Download 1.52Mbts.

The fields are dry, the dust flying high,
the horizon, wide and blue.
The mighty rain has left, the open sky,
and every cloud just passing through.

Chorus
Lotd let it  RaiN , Rain on dry land again!
Let those drops of Grace come dancing on my roof,
everything needs water like;;; I need you!
I want to feel, that thick wet mud, Ooooooooooooooo!ooooooo!oooo!oo!oooooooooooze,,,
between my toes again.

The grass is dead, the animals dying
where are those tears from heaven sent?
The wind roars hot, then sighing cools,
the fields still deserted and spent.

Well I realise now, that you never know,
how important something is till it's gone.
I once complained and wished, the rain would go
now I long for the rain to rain ON.... Sing, Sing Sing! (New South Wales Rain Song Festival)

                  
WE MUST HEAL THE WORLD BEFORE IT's TOO LATE...
...but before you can heal the world, you must heal thyself:        (Elizabeth Kubler Ross)