Weather is everything, both comfort and punishment.
It is an immediate presence, dictating to us, bullying us, helping us along. It is omnipotent and everywhere and we serve all its moods.
At its extremes it is punitive, rendering vast spaces like Antartica and the Sahara desolate.
The weather is also generous. Come spring it draws crops out of fields and invites animals to multiply, renewing all life, urging it through yet another cycle.
The weather can harry us with its storms and charm us with its mildness. Our relations with it are intimate. It communicates directly with our flesh and senses and through them regulates our emotional condition.
We have tried in our history to command the weather through invocation, ritual, prayer and science. But it has never been tamed. At most, our efforts have gained some knowledge of its processes but not how to manipulate them.
We are its supplicants.
It is an immediate presence, dictating to us, bullying us, helping us along. It is omnipotent and everywhere and we serve all its moods.
At its extremes it is punitive, rendering vast spaces like Antartica and the Sahara desolate.
The weather is also generous. Come spring it draws crops out of fields and invites animals to multiply, renewing all life, urging it through yet another cycle.
The weather can harry us with its storms and charm us with its mildness. Our relations with it are intimate. It communicates directly with our flesh and senses and through them regulates our emotional condition.
We have tried in our history to command the weather through invocation, ritual, prayer and science. But it has never been tamed. At most, our efforts have gained some knowledge of its processes but not how to manipulate them.
We are its supplicants.