Photo by Stephen Fearnley
This months Composer’ Choice is all about Rainmaking. In a nut shell it’s an invocation, a prayer, whatever you want to call a deep emphatic longing for the rain to come. Poor old ground is sad and dry here and every time the clouds gather they swoosh off. Wikipedia calls rainmaking a “weather modification ritual that attempts to invoke the rain”. Of course, most of us can think of American Indian rain dances and there are numerous accounts of their efficacy going way past an “attempt”. Rainmaking is a universal phenomena found in all human cultures.
There is a great story passed on via Larry Dossey [1] from Willigis Jäger, the German Benedictine monk and Zen master, about a drought-stricken village in rural China:
The village had no rain for a long time. All the prayers and processions had been in vain; the skies remained shut tight. In the hour of its greatest need, the village turned to the great rainmaker. He came and asked for a hut on the edge of the village and for a five-day supply of bread and water. Then he sent the people off to their daily work. On the fourth day it rained. The people…gathered in front of the rainmaker׳s hut to congratulate him and ask about the mystery of rainmaking. He answered them, “I can׳t make it rain.” “But it is raining,” the people said. The rainmaker explained: “When I came to your village, I saw the inner and outer disorder. I went into the hut and got myself in order. When I was in order, you, too, got in order; and when you were in order, nature got in order; and when nature got in order, it rained.”
This symbiotic relationship between us and nature really resonates. The shaman (that’s us!) corrects their internal state and in turn, through the morphogenic field (see Rupert Sheldrake’s TED talk : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg ), this correction goes out into the world which sympathetically responds.
And so, if you have too much rain where you are, please send some to the east coast of Australia. And likewise we can send you some sunshine…
With love
Steve
[1] Rainmaking, Dossey, Larry, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , 207 – 216
http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(14)00076-7/fulltext
Stephen Fearnley is an award-winning filmmaker, artist and composer. He composes transformational soundscapes for the meditation journeys of One Mind Live – a unique worldwide online group meditation community. To sample One Mind Live, go HERE