Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Posted on November 20, 2011 by Shibley
Nope, not about freshly printed U.S. dollars, but it got your attention!
Nearly two weeks ago we began adding the request for rain to our daily prayers. Within hours, there was a torrential downpour, with a brilliant lightening display and booming thunder. This grand display of the awesome power of nature was certainly awe inspiring. I would have been even more amazed by the driving rain and reverberating thunder had I not been walking home during a lightning storm. Then again, as I walked, the water penetrated my layers of clothing, leaving me to feel as if I was a part of the earth, yearning for water to nourish me, although I’m not sure that I was necessarily yearning to be soaked.
Upon arriving home, I hung my clothes up to dry and then went to sleep. Before I left my apartment the next morning, I checked my clothes, only to find them to still be retaining water. I hung them outside on the drying line, then walked to the bus stop to catch the bus on my way downtown. On the way, I passed the brown dried grasses and weeds that are behind my house.
Some days later, I noticed that the brown earth was not exclusively brown. The supple shoots of new leaves and green grass were pushing through, as I wrote in a post earlier this year, it’s a new and different kind of green than I am accustomed to, having grown up in a place where rain is generally plentiful, and where the first green makes its appearance in late March or early April. Here’s to more rain, more growth, and more green!