the rainmakers

It is monsoon season in Bali from November thru March. Everything else remains the same, except now it is raining, usually every day, sometimes all day, but life goes on. The same warm temperatures, the same praying in temples that are just a walled off grassy area without buildings, the same fishing boats, the same motorbikes as their main means of travel, the same outdoor lifestyle of a tropical country, the same hanging your clothes out to dry. So life goes on in between the raindrops. Not much difference.

Having lived here now for a year, and experienced the weather and daily lifestyle, I wondered how they could plan a big bi-annual ceremony for the temple during the monsoon season. Do you know for sure that the thousand devotees will have a dry place to sit and pray? Here, everything is planned according to the priests that plan the yearly calendar which combines a lunar calendar along with a 210 day ancient Hindu calendar. So when I was invited to partake in the 2 days of preparations prior to the big ceremony, I was wondering if we would be lucky and have a sunny day all of a sudden.

Sure enough, when the day of the ceremony came, the sky was blue, and the steep walk up the mountainside and the praying in the courtyard were all accomplished on pretty solid ground…not muddy or anything….how? It had just rained for a week straight? Day and night! I finally got around to asking Nyoman about it. What would have happened if it had rained during the ceremony? Would they have postponed it? Where would everyone have sat for 3 hours in the rain? She explained that they wouldn't have postponed it, because it was very expensive to do all of the preparations and it had to be done on that day.

"But the temple paid the rainmakers a lot of money so that there would be a nice day."

"What?!# The rainmakers?! What are rainmakers?"

"There are six rainmakers in Tejakula. Three of them could have been making all of that rain before the ceremony, so that we would have to pay another three to counter it."

"I don't get it….why would three of the rainmakers be making rain before the ceremony?"

"So that the temple would have to pay three rainmakers to make sure there is no rain. That is how they make their money. If it hadn’t been raining the week before, then we wouldn't have needed to pay the rainmakers to stop the rain for the ceremony. "

"A mafia on rainmaking?!"

"There are people that practice rainmaking…it is very hard work. It needs a lot of concentration. If they don't make rain, and they stay with all of that energy inside of them, they can be sick. They also have to make a living. So it all works out. We believe that there is black and white, good and evil, and we need them both. Not only good, and not only bad, but a balance between them. It is all God, and it is all part of life. So we accept it all and pray for the good but accept the evil too, and know it exists in order to keep the balance. And everyone needs to make a living..."

And this morning when I was out on the beach doing my tai chi and marveling at the beauty of the clouds and sky, I suddenly wondered if there are other co-creators here other than God that paints this horizon every day?!