We are also experiencing a now 7, going on 8 year draught. The Salina diocese performed a novena to St. Isadore and Salina was flooded and they quit praying…we are still dry. We’ve learned to ask for needed moisture. It’s been going on so long…we’ve had to develop a sense of humor about it.
In that vein, I offer this written in the 30’s by William Allen White–obviously not a farmer.
O Lord, In thy mercy grant us rain and by that we don’t mean a shower. We want to go out and watch the lightning rip across the southwestern sky in hot blue forks as the fat clouds roll in on us. We want to hurry home to close the house with the first fat drops the size of marbles, on a suddenly rising wind, chasing us and plunking the car hood. We want to scramble all over the house just as the first sheets decend, frantically slamming down windows.
O Lord of Hosts, we want to look out of the windows and watch the regiments of close-packed raindrops march diagonally down. We want to hear the gurgle of the gutters under the eaves, and then the sputter of the downspout. O God of Israel, Isaac, and Jacob, let it come down so hard, let the drops dance so high that the streets and sidewalks seem covered with a six inch fog of spatter-drops. Then let it just keep up for a while, and then begin to taper off, and then turn right around a get a lot worse, swishing, pounding, splattering, pouring, drenching, the thunder coming-crackity-BAM–and the lightening flashing so fast and furious you can’t tell which flash goes with which peal of thunder, so that all the women will get scared and climb on top of the beds and scream at you not to get too close to that window.
And then O Zealous God, repeat the whole act about three times, and in the middle of the second time we will climb the attic stairs and put the wash pan under the tiny leak in the roof which usually you can’t even notice in an ordinary rain. And after a couple of hours kind of taper it down, o Lord, to a good stady rain–not a drizzle, but a businesslike one that keeps up until just about dawn and then spits a few drops occasionally during the morning from a gray sky.
Kansas is indeed the Promised Land, O Lord and if it gets a break it will flow with milk and honey. But we can’t live much longer on promises. So in Thine own way and Thine own time, make up Thy mind, O Lord, and we will bow before Thy judgement, and praise Thy everlasting name. Amen.