I’m so grateful for the substantial monsoons we’re experiencing in Tucson this summer. They have a long way to go before we’ve caught up to our average rainfall for this past year. I choose to believe the rains of the last month have helped reduce the deficit. When I saw the rainfall totals late last week, and the flooding in parts of town, I was reminded of an old spiritual, “Didn’t It Rain, Children“, performed and sung by Sister Rosetta Tharpe
in 1944.  She was incredible, the lesser-known grandmother of rock and roll.

The picture I posted in the newsletter shows Sabino Dam at 700 CFS (cubic feet/second) The photo is courtesy of M. Horowitz, past-president of Sabino Canyon Volunteer Patrollers. As of last Friday morning (after our big rainfall event last Thursday night), the discharge rate at the dam is about 3500 CFS (or 5 times higher than when the photograph was taken), and the water volumes briefly hit about 9000 CFS overnight. The levels on Friday still indicated dangerously high flooding. We’ve had continued rainfall over the weekend, so while the water levels might have dropped, they might still be as high. I haven’t gone out to the Canyon to look.

We have a complicated relationship with rain. Rainfall is critical to life in the desert, just as potable water is critical to human life. In both cases, too much or too fast can create problems, if we haven’t prepared adequately for them. Sometimes, it isn’t possible to prepare, and we just hold on.

The song “Didn’t It Rain, Children” tells the story of Noah’s Ark. It can be told from a couple different perspectives, like all good teaching parables presented in the Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible. It’s either a cautionary tale about what can happen when we misbehave, and ‘daddy god’ gets really upset with us and wipes us off the face of the earth. Or it can be a tale of redemption and promise, that heavenly parent god taking care of the humans who noticed, listened and worked toward their own experience of good for themselves and others (the animals). While I don’t believe this story is an actual-factual literal account of what happened to Noah and his family (if, indeed, they were actual people), or necessarily that there was a cataclysmic flood that destroyed almost all of humanity, there are some useful take-aways in the teaching parable.

We do always get to pay attention to what’s going on in our minds and in our lives, and take appropriate action. We have this failsafe partner in the Law that shows us exactly what we believe, and makes no errors in matching up what we believe with what we get to experience. And we have the perpetual promise of a rainbow when we align our actions with the highest and greatest good.

From Ernest Holmes, Hidden Power of the Bible, “The Bible is a book pointing a way to freedom under law, to guidance under love, to revelation through reason. Let us approach its study with this in mind, and much will become clear.”

“I’ve heard tell that what you imagine sometimes comes true.” – Roald Dahl
(creator of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, James & the Giant Peach, Matilda and so much more)

–Rev Janis