Gevurot Geshamim

Sometimes it seems that I am led to certain topics. The latest is Gevurot Geshamim, גבורות גשמים, the strength/powers of the rain. At the end of Sukkkot, we change the rain prayer we say twice during the Amidah from blessings to rain.

The prayer occurs twice. The first time is during the prayer for reviving the dead, מחיה המתים, and the second is during the prayer for a good year. The Talmudic explanation for this is because when the rains come it is like reviving the dead. I remember being in the Negev desert many years ago and watching what I thought was a dead branch start to sprout immediately after the rains. There are certain plants in the desert that remain dormant for years and then come to life after the rains. Thus the rains can easily be understood as bringing life to the dead.

Interestingly, during this prayer, we mention the rains, but don't request any. Later, during the prayer for a good year, we specifically ask for a blessing during the summer, and dew and rain during the winter. In any land, rain is essential to agriculture, and too much or too little rain can determine who lives and who dies in the coming year.

Traditionally there are three things for which God alone is responsible: creating life (babies), reviving the dead, and the rains. This leads to very interesting discussions about the effect of modern technology on human power to effect those three things, but in my mind we are still technicians. For all the medical advances in IVF, we still have no idea how life is created. We can help it along, but if it works or not is far beyond us. We can predict the rain, but we have no control over it. We've just gotten better at observing what God does, not influencing it. Though human actions do seem to have an effect on the climate, we are just a small part of a very big system.

My question here is really about the term Gevurot Geshamim. In one sense it could mean just the strength of the rains meaning that we want strong rains and not just a drizzle. In another term, it might mean the power to cause the rain to fall. In that light, I called the soul of Honi the circler who was a Talmudic figure who actually did cause it to rain.

The last time I talked to him about this, he showed me that he could connect to the weather and influence in much the same way that I heal clients. If God meant for it to rain, then he was able to help that process happen, and if God did not, there was nothing he could do.

This time, he showed me how to connect to the energy of clouds. They felt very scattered, like touching something that has a form but very little substance. The process of helping the rain was one of filling the clouds so that they became fuller, more dense. When the cloud became too "pregnant" with energy, the rain would come forth. I practiced it awhile, connecting to God and then connecting to the clouds, though I don't think I'm much good at it. And it is very humbling to realize how little power one have over this process. The analogy that comes to mind is of pushing a truck. If you are going downhill, it will roll with your help, but if you are trying to push it uphill, there's not much you can do. Maybe the strength of the rains is the strength to push that truck?

I need to do some more study on this topic, so hopefully will write more in the future. I suspect also that this is one of those topics in Judaism which energetically comes up every year around this time, so if I don't get back to it soon, I'll probably be back next year about this time.