Columnists rummage around in the closets of our lives looking for things we share. Those become leaping off points to write about. I didn’t have to look hard this time: water. If you’re reading this, you’ve had too much rain.
For a few weeks, friends from further away asked if we had too much rain. One week, north of us got three or four or more inches. The next week south of us had four or five or more inches. Meanwhile, we were getting less.
My response became officially obsolete last Saturday when four inches in two days gave us more than eight in a week. We were in Mankato that afternoon when the tenth of an inch that was forecasted turned into another inch. We came home to a soggier basement than we left, and more cropland submerged.
We had our “big rain.”
Big rain means a lot of our crops are under water. We live among lakes, only without the benefit of appreciated lake-front property values. Those are expensive corn and soybean seeds under water out there. A couple of weeks ago I replanted about ten acres of drowned soybeans. Those acres and more are shimmery blue as I write.
There is water in the old part of our basement. A valiant sump pump works round the clock in the new basement. A bunch of farm tasks were delayed while I spent three days squeegeeing and sucking water with our Shop Vac. It is all annoying.
Then you see the heart-wrenching pictures of whole towns with water covering them, houses sticking out of sudden inland seas. My “annoying” is small in comparison to lives upended. We look at the pictures and try to imagine the work and expense. We can’t.
We offer prayers, even if we don’t know the people so affected. Prayer is like that sometimes. It’s more an intersession to creation and the Creator than a specific request. “Help them, Lord.”
If you follow global news, there are natural disasters somewhere on our planet every day. We give to Catholic Relief Services, so get email reports on horrible situations where people are struggling to survive. I admit most cross in front of my eyes with little attention. Even if you try to care, a fatigue can set in.
Then you see towns and homes that look just like your own, and suddenly emotions heighten.
After living 68 years with some of them rainier than others, I know things that will show up in my head. They are as predictable as rain you’d say. “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” a 1970 song by Creedence Clearwater Revival will begin playing in my mind as I listen to drops against the window:
“Good men through the ages
Tryin’ to find the sun
And I wonder, still I wonder
Who’ll stop the rain?”
It’s one of those songs I love without really knowing what it’s about. I looked it up, and it’s a little bit Vietnam and a little bit Woodstock. Whatever, it works on a rainy June day on a southern Minnesota farm.
I also know this Bible verse will appear in my consciousness. Matthew 5:45: “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. The rain falls on the patterned tiled fields and the poorly drained.”
OK, I made that last part up. Speaking of recurring themes, I once again am covetous of pattern tiled fields. Likely, they will yield more bushels. Beyond that, they will make life easier for the farmer who will be able to get in and out of them with less chance of getting stuck.
All farmers dread getting stuck. No one is having a good time when your tractor is getting hooked to chains or tow straps.
Interestingly, in the New Ulm Journal’s page of 100-year ago news last week, right next to “Moonshiners at Sleepy Eye are Arrested,” was this headline: “Heaviest Storm in Past Ten Years Strikes New Ulm.” The story described a city baling water from basements of homes and businesses. Few roads were paved then, and many were unpassable. Phone lines were blown down in storms.
The writer reports that “almost two inches of rain fell during the storm.” You don’t have to be a weather geek like me to know that a two-inch rain now is barely noteworthy. A farmer with good drainage and big equipment will be in the field a couple of days after.
When I was a younger farmer, I remember a five-inch rain that was considered a “hundred-year event.” Last May, ten-plus inches fell in spots around here. This June, same thing. I’m in the house I grew up in, and don’t remember water in the basement when I was young. Now, we’ve had that two years in a row.
What’s going on?
Something is. At least, scientists and I think so. The notion of debating climate change at this point feels like standing in a burning house arguing whether those flames are a problem. But we all know people who “saw a video” explaining that human-caused climate change is a hoax.
A meteorologist I read was discussing chaotic weather systems causing record heat east and west of us and flooding across the upper Midwest. He said we have an “unusually amplified weather pattern for June.” Which is exactly what would happen if the planet were warming.
Can one 68-year-old farmer living one life in one place in one time tell you the climate is changing?
No. But if you add my experience to evidence gathered everywhere else, it means something.
As crazy as things are on land, here in the middle of a continent, the better evidence is found in the 70% of the Earth’s surface that is water. More than 90% of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse effects goes into the oceans. If you magically lived in the ocean, the change in our lifetimes would be more dramatic. The deniers who “saw a video” wouldn’t get much attention in that magic world.
The good news is that lots of people younger and smarter than me are working to lessen the harm, which is all we can do at this point. It might mean I can’t do whatever I want whenever I want. That’s OK.
Isn’t that what Christians are supposed to do?