Watching and Waiting

“Hurricane Gloria is now a Category 4 storm, approximately 150 miles off the coast, heading north-west.  New coordinates will be available at 11:00 pm.”

 

I am sitting in the Emergency Operations Center as we wait for more news of a storm that is heading our way.  We have our tracking maps in front of us, and we plot the course each time we get new coordinates that tell us the storm’s location.  In the twenty-plus years that I helped to manage a city on the coast of North Carolina, it became an all-too-frequent exercise.

 

Weather prediction today is much more precise.  But there are still unknowns.  So getting prepared is in some ways an exercise in imagination and trust.  It takes imagination to project ourselves into a situation that is totally unlike what our present senses tell us:  imagining wind and rains when the sun is shining, picturing the flooded streets and overtopped walls, huge trees scattered like toothpicks, tasting the fear in our guts when all seems peaceful.  And it takes trust of the scientific models prepared by skillful people, listening to experts in emergency preparedness, and pulling together as leaders of a community with responsibility for thousands of lives and millions of dollars in property values. 

 

But the imagination and trust are necessary in order to help prepare for a storm that we hope will not come.  We cannot wait until the scene changes before our eyes to take action.  We have to use our imagination and our trust to convince ourselves that the danger is real.  Denial is not a productive strategy.

 

This is a tiny example of the situation I believe we find ourselves in when it comes to climate change.  While there are disturbing incidents, the overall situation may seem not to be too dire.  It’s hard to get exercised over the loss of some obscure species of animal or plant life.  It’s hard to convince ourselves that much of Boston will be under water when the sea rises just a few more feet.  When the rhetoric around us denigrates the science and the scientists, when powerful interests can buy the opinions they want and suppress the unfavorable data, it takes trust to find and listen to experts. When the whole idea of “public good” has been eliminated in favor of a competitive economic model in which the individual is the ultimate measure of worth, it takes imagination to see our neighbors as deserving of our concern.

 

Like the Hebrew prophets foretelling Israel’s doom, many experts are telling us that some damage is irreversible.  We have to be simultaneously alarmed about this damage and sufficiently hopeful to maintain focus on making changes in our lifestyle and choices.  “But the sun is still shining,” we want to say, echoing the people of Judah whose splendid Temple was also shining.

 

Perhaps the imagination and trust that we practice as Christians can help us take these threats seriously.  Perhaps the discipline of loving God and neighbor can shift our focus from our own desires and wants and into a bigger picture of all human flourishing.  Perhaps our trust of the Creator’s love for all creation can shift our thinking about “this fragile earth, our island home,” as we say in a Eucharistic prayer.

 

New coordinates coming out soon.  Let’s get our bearings.  See you in church!

 

Faithfully and fondly,

Rainey