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Praying For Rain

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TheQuixote

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Nepalis bare all to call for rain

Women in Nepal are reportedly ploughing fields in the nude to please the rain god during a dry spell.


The Himalayan Times said about a dozen Tharu women in south-west Baijapur bared all as concern grows over lack of rain during the rice planting season.

"My mother-in-law said the God would be pleased and make rain fall if women till the land naked," it quoted one of the farmers, Ambika Tharu, 35.

Men also pray for rain, it said, but keep their clothes on.

Farmers usually finish planting rice by the end of June.

But this year, with no rain and irrigation, land has been lying uncultivated.

Mrs Tharu said tilling the land naked was a tradition which had been observed for generations.

"I dared to bare all to please the God because we will have to face a very difficult situation if it does not rain," she said.
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BBCi News 04/07/04
 
Time to reanimate this 2004 thread. €2.6 to go into the pockets of priests to pray for rain!

Indian state to pay and pray as rain stays away
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/wor ... 09329.html
RAHUL BEDI in New Delhi

Tue, Jul 24, 2012

SCANTY MONSOON rains have prompted the authorities in India’s southern state Karnataka to allocate a large sum of money to appease the rain gods instead of spending it on desperately needed anti-drought measures.

Karnataka’s Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has allocated 170 million rupees (€2.6 million) to organise special prayers in each of the state’s 34,000 temples to invoke the rain gods.

This is Karnataka’s worst drought in 42 years, with 150 of its 176 subdivisions severely affected by a weak monsoon that lasts from early June to mid-September and is the lifeline for the region and its people.

State officials said crops had rotted in the dry spell, groundwater was seriously depleted, drinking water was being supplied by tankers and thousands of desperate and hungry folk were migrating to other, similarly parched provinces for survival.

“I have done nothing wrong [in allocating money for prayers as we need the intervention of the Almighty at times likes these,” newly appointed minister for religious endowments Kota Srinivasa Poojary said in the state capital Bangalore at the weekend.

He was responding to widespread criticism from the opposition.

The BJP government plans on holding prayers on two days that are ‘auspicious’ according to the Hindu calendar: July 27th and August 2nd and will allocate funds to the 34,000 temples across the state to conduct elaborate ceremonies by Brahmin priests.
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And they're praying again.

Israel's Agriculture Minister, Uri Ariel, has joined with the country's religious leaders in an attempt to use the power of prayer to end a drought.

Mr Ariel is an Orthodox Jew and led prayers on Thursday at Jerusalem's Western Wall.

Severe drought for four years has left the country's water supplies at low levels.

Critics said the minister should tackle the crisis more practically.

Israel's drought has had a significant impact on farming communities and caused the country to become reliant on its desalination plants on its Mediterranean coast.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42507968
 
Be careful what you ask (pray) for ... :thought:
Biblical flooding in Saudi Arabia sees cars swept away after King prays for rain

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been hit by biblical flooding after the country's king prayed for rain.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud had called on the locals of Saudi Arabia to pray for rain earlier this week.

Due to a lack of rain in recent months, the King, who is also the custodian of the two holy mosques, told his people to “supplicate Allah almighty” and ask for “forgiveness and repentance”. ...

He also told them to do “good deeds and give charity” all while praying for rainfall.

The official decree came from the Royal Court on Tuesday (November, 22).

And just 24 hours later, the heavens opened – but in the most dramatic fashion. ...

Video footage posted on social media show waves of water, measuring several feet high, washing cars away down local roads in the cities of Jeddah, Rabigh and Khulais, while according to reports in the Saudi Gazette, schools and universities closed as a result of the devastating floods. ...

The country's Civil Defence even advised locals to “exercise caution and steer clear from stagnant rainwater and valleys”.

And the rain was so dramatic, that the road to Mecca – Islam's holiest city – was actually closed, which almost never happens. ...
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FULL STORY (With Photos & Video): https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/biblical-flooding-saudi-arabia-sees-28574813
 
maximus otter said:
l’m surprised that that headline made it to print in these delicate, sensitive times: “Biblical” flooding in Saudi Arabia? ...
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The headline seems incongruous only if one overlooks Islamic self-contextualization as the latest in a series of prophets and revelations which acknowledges and includes those found in the Bible (both the Torah and the Christian Gospel). Noah is considered a prophet in Islam, too. The flood is cited as a divine corrective measure just as it is in the earlier traditions' scriptures. Same "Book" (as in "People of the Book"), but different editions ...
 
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