California’s record rainstorms are a blessing, a hardship and a spiritual experience

In a state crippled by drought, how are we to make sense of the destructive storms that have led our governor to proclaim a state of emergency, even as they fill our reservoirs and replenish our fields?

Here at last is the life-giving water we’ve yearned for: nourishing, regenerative, cleansing and essential, especially in the wake of the state’s driest three-year period on record. And yet, these desperately needed rains have been responsible for mudslides, flooding, power outages and, most tragically, the loss of 19 lives.

It may feel like California is being cursed by the gods, but in fact humanity’s relationship with rain has always been paradoxical. Rain has the ability to create, and to destroy. And so it becomes a matter of faith: We pray for it, even as we fear it.

“In Judaism there is the concept of beneficial rain,” said Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback, senior rabbi at Stephen Wise Temple in Bel-Air. “We pray for rain in its proper amount, and at the right time.”

Judaism emerged in the Middle East in a climate much like Southern California’s. Rains came in the winter; the summers were long and dry. Today, Jewish people around the world pray for rain beginning on the last day of the fall harvest festival of Sukkot and continue until Passover arrives in the spring.

The tension between too much rain and not enough is embedded in a long and poetic prayer, recited by worshipers for thousands of years. It ends with these words:

You are Adonai, our God

Who causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall.

For blessing and not for curse.

For life and not for death.

For plenty and not for lack.

The biblical story of Noah’s Ark and the great flood, a foundational myth for Jewish people, and for Christians and Muslims as well, demonstrates that torrential rain has long been seen as a punishment.

“I don’t read the Noah story literally, but I do see it as a type of sacred myth that invites me to think about how human behavior can influence the larger world,” Zweiback said. “We can connect that to climate change and we can also connect it to the way we are in the world and how that can affect our environment in every sense of the word.”

In Islam, rain is considered a giver of life and associated with resurrection, said Muzammil Siddiqi, religious director of the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove. Rain is mentioned several times in the Quran, including in Chapter 25, verses 48-49, where it is written:

We send down pure water from the sky. That with it We may give life to a dead land, and slake the thirst of things We have created, cattle and men in great numbers.

In 2015, another time of drought, Siddiqi led 20,000 Muslims in prayers at the end of Ramadan, concluding with a prayer for rain in which he raised his hands to the heavens asking God for a “rain that will bring benefit to us, and will not bring any harm to us.”

“On the one hand, rain is a blessing that makes our land produce more and become fertile, and on the other hand too much rain means disaster,” Siddiqi said.

In this tension of opposites he sees an invitation to practice humility, a perspective that stands in contrast to California’s centuries-long, hubristic efforts to dam up, divert and tame rain and runoff. “Despite all the things we have, we cannot control rain,” he said. “All we can do is turn to God and ask for blessings.”

Scientists say California will experience more extreme drought and more extreme rainfall as the planet continues to warm because of human activity, but ultimately, the challenge we’re experiencing — too much or not enough — is one with which human societies have always had to grapple.

“We have these two emergencies, the drought and the rain,” said Jennifer Savage of Humboldt County, who works on ocean policy for the Surfrider Foundation. “What’s wrong with us that the answer to one results in another emergency?”

For Swami Sarvadevananda, the spiritual leader of the Vedanta Society of Southern California, the duality inherent in rain reflects the duality present in all things.

“The Vedantic idea is that this world is a mix of good and bad,” he said. “There is no absolute good and no absolute bad. That is the nature of creation.”

Rather than fight this truth, Vedanta philosophy teaches practitioners to accept duality, Sarvadevananda said. And also, that this duality can be transcended by recognizing the singular consciousness that exists behind all things.

“If you see the divine only in the temple, that is one thing,” he said. “But if you see the divine in everything, that is a better spiritual practice. Worshiping is not restricted to the temple, but also in nature.”

The dual nature of rain is also present in the cosmology of the Aztecs who named their rain god Tlāloc. Worshiped alongside the sun god Huitzilopochtli in the great Aztec temple, Tlāloc was portrayed as both fearsome and beautiful with royal blue skin, circular eyes made of serpents and thick red fangs.

The name Tlāloc means “He who makes things sprout,” which in itself indicates a type of violence, said Davíd Carrasco, a historian of religions at Harvard University.

“What do seeds do when they sprout? They break open,” he said. “And what do the rains do? They break open the Earth. So there is this sense of genesis with this great water, but you can’t regenerate the world unless the world has come to an end. We don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.”

The themes of violence and regeneration around water continue to resonate as California braces for yet more rain.

“In a battle to subdue nature, we are not going to win,” Savage said. “We can keep trying to tech our way out of it or build our way out of it, but we’re not going to win.”

As for praying for rain, sometimes that’s not just the purview of clerics and faith traditions. In 2011, as Texas weathered a punishing drought, Gov. Rick Perry, an evangelical Christian, declared April 22 to 24 as “Days of Prayer for Rain.”

“I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions,” he declared, “to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal and robust way of life.”

The prayers were not immediately successful, and the percentage of the state experiencing exceptional drought more than doubled over the following month.

It was another sage reminder that while humans can try to intercede with their gods to bring the rain, or make it stop, there are some forces in the world that are eternally beyond our control.