Christo-cosmic Aesthetics and Poetics

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of rain in the land of the Bible. Actually, it is impossible to overestimate the importance of rain anywhere: all life on dry land depends on water in the form of precipitation, either directly as rain or snow, or indirectly through springs or rivers fed by them. But in most inhabited parts of the world, precipitation is taken for granted-like sunshine or air, both of which are also necessary for life. Not so in Israel. Rain is crucial for all crops raised in the land-irrigated plots are historically minuscule gardens, few and far between. The major crops-fields of wheat and barley, vineyards and olive groves, fruit trees and grass for the flocks; in short, everything that sustains life-are all watered directly by rain. But rainfall is not spread evenly throughout the year. The rains come in the rainy season-usually from sometime in October to sometime in April. The first and the last rain of the season have actual names, "yore" and "malkosh," though in English they can only be labeled as "first rains" and "last rains." The summer is completely dry; so much so that one never has to make a rain contingency plan. A few drops of moisture for a few minutes once in a summer, which occur every few years, are a cause for wonder and comments. A single five-minute shower in the summer may happen once or twice in a lifetime and makes headline news. This round of rains in winter and a dry summer is built into the life cycle of the flora and the fauna of the land, into the expectations of humans and the rhythms of agriculture. (slide 2: fields of grain) The dry summer is enjoyed and taken for granted. It is a time of celebration, of reaping and of harvesting, and of sleeping outdoors in the open air: Ruth was surely not the only one who ever visited her future spouse on the threshing floor. The landscape is not grey, but amber: the grass and the annuals are not wilted, but rather ripened, moving on in their yearly cycle of life. (aside: golden fields of grain anywhere in the world carry in their genes the climate of Israel; the wild wheat and barley plants ripen their seeds in preparation for the summer drought).

Today, we are living in an age in which the pace of disturbing change is accelerating, and the ground is trembling beneath our feet. More and more we begin to discern the magnitude of a terrible truth and the shape of its outlines: We are getting what we wished for. In other words, what we have sown—our highest values and most cherished way of life—is producing a “harvest” that may just eclipse Hosea’s whirlwind in terms of destructive intensity and, sad to say, poetic justice. Thus, old Hosea’s ancient poetry still rings with archetypal truth: the inevitable shock and bitterness of unintended consequences. “All we did was sow the wind,” we innocently complain. “Why has this violent whirlwind befallen us?”

SJOT, 2023

Psalm 42 draws from the natural world in order to express something about the inner longing and anxiety the psalmist feels over separation and absence of God in terms of a thirsting hind. In this sense, water functions as a metaphor in Ps 42, expressing what is hard to say "straightforwardly" about vulnerability and longing for the divine, the life giving, and the lifepreserving. This article argues that water functions in overlapping manners in the psalm, evoking desire, denoting God, expressing vulnerability, but also indicating one way that the psalmist might experience satisfaction: water. Water in Ps 42, like the temple, is an object of longing. Water functions both as metaphor for the divine and as mediator of the divine.

Physical Review E, 2002

We demonstrate how, from the point of view of energy flow through an open system, rain is analogous to many other relaxational processes in nature such as earthquakes. By identifying rain events as the basic entities of the phenomenon, we show that the number density of rain events ...

Barbara Baert Looking into the Rain Humankind has a special relationship with rain. The sensory experience of water falling from the heavens evokes feelings ranging from fear to gratitude and has inspired many works of art. Using unique and expertly developed art-historical case studies-from prehistoric cave paintings up to photography and cinema-this book casts new light on a theme that is both ecological and iconological, both natural and cultural-historical. Barbara Baert's distinctive prose makes Looking Into the Rain. Magic-Moisture-Medium a profound reading experience, particularly at a moment when disruptions of the harmony among humans, animals, and nature affect all of us and the entire planet.

Acta Theologica, 2017

This article focuses on the rhetorical interplay between drought, thirst, and the water of life in a time of drought. The negotiation of meaning that occurs in the interaction between Jesus and the Samaritan woman (John 4) reflects the struggle for meaning that occurs when water is rhetorically ambiguous in a time of water scarcity. This paper argues that the theological rhetoric of water is embedded in soteriological imagination, which requires remembering – through the sacrament of baptism – the significance of the giving God who wills human and ecological flourishing. 2 Moreover, it is argued that the good news of salvation brings rhetoric and ethics, doctrine and life, into a dynamic communicative process, so that water, as that which is freely given by God, has nothing less than abundant life or ecological and human flourishing as its apparent intended focus.

On the representation of rain in ancient, Western and Japanese visual art.

Lexham Bible Dictionary Entry

Studies in Christian Ethics, 2009

Revue d'Assyriologie, 1985