A prayer for rain

New Mexico, where I live, is currently swaddled by fires,

And so it feels incumbent to pray for rain. 

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And yet my prayer is not only for New Mexico, nor for literal rain:

It is for all people, places, and times, and for all soothing, quenching liquids for various states of distress.

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My prayer is for politics, in which all sides perceive themselves as beset by existential threats,

And must respond with crushing blows;

Here, I pray for rain. 

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It is for entertainment, a dizzying, electronic hallucination which draws us endlessly from ourselves,

But never once dissipates loneliness;

here, I pray for rain.

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My prayer is for food and farming, both of which can be conducted consciously, but all too often are done so with little attention to wellbeing;

Here, I pray for rain. 

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I pray for rain in the field of psychology, in which people regard themselves as atomized individuals responsible for their own problems, and therefore under great pressure;

I pray for the realization that the self is an illusion.

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I pray for rain in education, where the illusion expressed above culminates in a veritable arms race–albeit intellectual–with young hearts and minds the collateral damage;

I pray for the awareness that learning has no end goal and is not a competition.

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I pray for rain in exercise, in the criminal justice system, in technocratic gambits, in the raising of children. I pray for rain in the study of history, in the production of art and the treatment of artists, in the mapping of cities and creation of housing.

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Mostly, I pray for rain in the seat of the soul, a riverbed already flourishing if we are willing to listen. In this riverbed, I wish for us to see that we hold all the cooling, satiating forces necessary to our peace and healing, a source which begs quiet from us, not action; reflection and gentle coaxing, not an external search for truth.

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In the timeless waters of being, our salvation shall be found.