Here in the Midwest, we’re in the enduring a serious heat spell and drought. We’re not alone; much of America is experiencing significant drought conditions.
The prevailing color of the world around us is brown. The grass is brown, the parched, cracked, dusty earth is brown, and the dessicated creek beds are brown, too. When we do get rain, as we did on Sunday, it’s in the form of a violent gully-washer that comes down in torrents, bounces off ground baked rock-hard by 90-degree temperatures and bright sunshine, runs briskly off to the storm sewers, and leaves as quickly as it came. We’re way overdue for a long, soaking rain; the kind that replenishes the water table, lets the earth become moistened, and returns the blades of grass to some semblance of greenness.
The weather is the weather, but when familiar streams begin to run bone dry you start to anxiously scan the cloudless skies, listen carefully to the weather report, and consciously root for rain. At times like this, I’m glad I’m not a farmer and dependent on the fickle heavens for my livelihood.
Sometimes I wonder if America has become a land of enablers. How often do you hear people respond to news of failures by others by making excuses or attacking the person who delivers the news? Whether the fault lies with their children, their chosen political candidates, or the school or church they support, people are often much too willing to condone or cover up misdeeds. It’s as if the enabler’s identity becomes so wrapped up with the politician, or school, that they simply cannot accept the possibility of failure — and therefore the blame inevitably must lie elsewhere.
