Elemental Things
I experienced a miracle the other day-- water falling out of sky.
Yes, it was rain, and in drought-stricken Texas, it was greeted with joy and wonder. We've gone so long without measurable rain that people joke some children have not seen enough rain in their brief lives to know what it is.
I grew up in West Texas in the midst of the terrible drought of the 1950s. I thought "Let us pray for rain" was a regular part of the Sunday liturgy, just like the Creed. We lived in an arid land that had become a desert; with dust storms so bad they took the paint off the sides of cars.
A different scourge accompanies drought in North Central Texas - grass fires. In recent months strong winds sent huge grass fires roaring across the land at high speeds, nearly wiping out one whole small town, and burning countless homes, barns and businesses. By the grace of God, the loss of human life has been small, but still tragic. Animals and crops have not fared so well.
Wind, fire and water - elemental things that bring us face to face with what really matters, with truth.
On days when the haze and smell of smoke from yet another grass fire lingers in the air, I wager there's not a person in town who isn't mentally listing what he or she would grab on their way out of the house with a fire roaring up to their back door. These things move so fast there often are mere minutes to flee.
What is important narrows down fast when lives are on the line.
People. Pets. Photographs.
I think one reason West Texans are generally pretty tolerant people, in spite of an innate conservatism, is because they live in place where life and death can turn on a whim of the wind. They know the weather out there can kill you quickly and without warning. Such places offer clarity. There isn't time or energy to waste on judging one's neighbors. After all, those neighbors might be the only people near enough to help if things get dicey.
This is a tolerance based in pragmatism, but it grows out of a knowledge that none of us can say we have no need of the other.
That's why I am astonished when I hear some Episcopalians and Anglicans say of entire groups of people that they have no need of them.
That's not to say there haven't been times when I have been tempted to write off groups of people. I live in a diocese where it's very tempting to wish the diocesan leadership would quit talking about leaving the Episcopal Church and just do it!
Sometimes after a particularly spiteful diocesan convention, or in the wake of some meeting where speaker after speaker excoriates The Episcopal Church, or after yet another statement or resolution has been issued that once again scapegoats women and lesbians and gays for all the ills of the church, I am ready for them to just go. After all, if The Episcopal Church is so vile, why do they want to stay?
But on my better days, I know I don't want them to go. And I hope they don't want me to go, even though they have made it clear they think I am a liberal heretic in a "pagan" church.
The place where this comes clear to me is the altar rail. If my bishop is celebrating, I make a point to take communion from his hand, because we are in communion with one another whether we like it or not. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. That doesn't mean we have to like each other--but we do have to love one another.
It's hard. It's so much easier, yes, even more fun to be snide and mean-spirited about those with whom we disagree.
But the bread and wine make that impossible.
Just like wind, fire and water, it's the elemental things that bring us face to face with what matters, with truth.
How dare we say we have no need of one another?