Water, water everywhere... but here

We have had rain three days straight now, short intense showers and long slow showers. With our rain deficit in the two digit range, we have been watching our pastures turn crunchy brown. Cows have been searching for grass amongst the weeds that seem unaffected by the lack of rain. If we could understand how thistles manage to prosper with or without rain maybe we could transfer that property to grass.
Our water pressure is not strong enough to run a sprinkler and we are beginning to worry about the affect of the drought on our well. I keep a plastic tub under the faucets and catch water used for rinsing glasses, washing hands and other small cleaning tasks. This water is keeping my outdoor plants alive. As I stood on the porch pouring water on my hydrangeas, I remembered my Grandma’s house.
At Cloverly, we drew water from the well in a bucket and brought it to the kitchen where two buckets sat side by side on a table. An aluminum dipper hung on the side of one bucket. We drank from the dipper and no one worried much about drinking after somebody else. The little enclosed back porch had a shelf for wash basins, soap, a mirror and our toothbrushes. We would take our basins and a glass to the bucket, fill them and return to the porch. There we would wash ourselves, soaping and rinsing, face first and feet last, until we were clean. Opening the squeaky screen door, we would throw water on the flower bed. We would dip our toothbrush in the glass of water, add toothpaste and brush. Going out on the back steps, we would rinse and spit on the ground throwing the glass of water where we spit.
On Saturday nights, we would bring in several buckets of water and dump them in the big washtub placed in the middle of the kitchen floor. Pans on the stove would hold steaming hot water that Grandma would add to the water in the tub until the temperature was warm. Then we would bathe, one after another, in the same water. Water was precious and plentiful... precious because it took work to acquire and plentiful because the well always was full.
Water that is hand drawn from a well is treated differently than water on tap. We lived in a conscious state of awareness connected to water. When we walked through the kitchen, we checked the buckets to see if more water was needed. When you have to go outside and pull a heavy bucket of water hand over hand to the top, you don’t waste it.
This is the second or third year of our extreme drought. Images of the Dust Bowl from the thirties seem more real to me now when I drive up our road surrounded by disturbed dirt in the air. Daily mountain showers are a distant memory, no longer the usual pattern in the summertime. Once again I am living with a heightened awareness of water, its abundance and its scarcity. Unbuffered and unprotected by a city water system, we in the country who depend on wells see and feel the affects of the drought every day.
Our ground is baked hard, so hard you have to use a pick axe to dig a hole, so hard that mama’s cats can’t dig holes and have to come inside for the litter box. The water hole in the Sound of Music Hill is barely a mudhole. The rain can’t penetrate the hard surface easily so it runs off carrying the top layers of dirt with it. Some days praying for rain seems downright sensible and the only thing to do.
Michael says to pray for rain is to hold God accountable for the weather, like holding God accountable for floods and tornadoes. But when my body and soul, the fields and streams are parched and dry because there has been no rain, what else can I do but pray? Like Zechariah I will “Ask for rain from the Lord in the season of the spring rain, from the Lord who makes the storm clouds, who gives us showers of rain...” I will pray for Ezekiel’s vision...”And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing.” I will pray for rain and showers, not just for me and my hill, but for all who are parched and dry in body and spirit. I will ask for showers of blessing to fall upon the turkey hens trying to find grazing for their broods... rain that will grow the grass by the high barn where the deer graze... water for the streams and water holes where cows and racoons and rabbits drink... damp, cool dirt for the frogs and turtles... Send us showers, Lord, that will soften our ground and our hearts that we may bend towards you refreshed and renewed.