Praying for Rain

“Het moet niet gekker worden!” as we would say in Holland. It seems that - even though nobody likes anybody else in this country when it comes to their spiritual background - in times of trouble they tend to find one another. And currently that is the state of the rain. Or actually, the lack of it.

It has not been raining decently since last March, I’d say. Actually it has, but only twice, and those occasions were so joyful that I promptly blogged about it.

But two times obviously won’t do. Farmers are complaining, and disaster and doom is predicted by the director general of the ministry, the head of the farmers union, engineer Charbel Lahoud, the dean of the Faculty of Science at the Lebanese American University and an army of other water experts or otherwise.

What shall we do, oh loh and behold?

We shall not conserve our water consumption, nor teach water conservation techniques to the people, we shall not fix the leaky water infra structure. Nor shall we do anything that would avoid that half of the water that falls in Lebanon just runs into the sea. No no no, we shall do nothing of the sort.

Instead, we shall pray. I think that is just wonderful.

The muslims have been praying for divine intervention  this Friday. I am not sure whether the shia and the sunni are in unison over this one. Coming Sunday the christians are going at it as well. They are praying for rain.

It is not impossible, you know, here in the Middle East. I have actually seen that happen before. Not the praying, but the divine intervention of a rain shower. That was in May 2008, when a massive rain shower in my neighborhood sent all the pathetic little Rambos with Kalshnikoffs scurrying back into their holes. They didn’t stay there very long, but it was the end of the battle for that night.

I think I can answer everybody’s prayers; My iPad application says that as of Monday, we can expect rain.