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The Nation Joins Hands to Pray for Rain: Is it Enough?

By philobean | August 7, 2007

Last Sunday, all the Catholic Churches across the country said short prayers, as part of Sunday mass celebration, asking ‘the Almighty’ for rain, following an order issued by Roman Catholic Church leadership late last week. Prompted by reports from civil society and government warning of an impending water shortage should consumption remain at current levels while rainfall fall short of the expected amount this rainy season.

A day after the country knelt in prayer, rains came and it hasn’t stopped pouring since then. “Two days isn’t enough,” however, say news reports, “It will take two more storms and continued rainfall for the dams to fill up and return to normal levels”. Should the Roman Catholic Church then issue another order for concerted prayer this Sunday? Or, is prayer no longer enough to solve the problem?

The early part of the 21st century has seen a proliferation of horror stories concerning the environment–from, the more popular issue, climate change (which includes global warming) to, the less famous yet no less of a scare, impending water shortage. Water, it has been said, will soon become this century’s oil (as oil had become last century’s gold). Various international organizations of repute, including the World Bank and the United Nations, have echoed these warnings on water.  Do we, Filipinos, understand the issue? Or, are most of us still stuck in the lebenswelt of the premodern era, an age wherein water, while sometimes unavailable, was generally abundant (and the water cycle sustainable)?

During this time of pre-crisis, it’s best that the government and civil society work hard to alert the country en masse of the real (underlying) criticality of the water issue. This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill lack of rainfall. The nature of our water cycle is changing (and its changing for the worse). Action must be taken and it must be taken at the grassroots level, at the level of each household and citizen, if the impending crisis is to be prevented.

Topics: Environment, A little political |

One Response to “The Nation Joins Hands to Pray for Rain: Is it Enough?”

  1. hip2b2 Says:
    August 12th, 2007 at 9:04 pm

    Hehe. After praying for rain we got two typhoons. The power of prayer!

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