Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Memorial of Saint Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Finding faith in Fisher
Jesus got up from his sleep, rebuked the winds and sea, and there was great calm.
I watched a tiny black picnic beetle with filigreed wings crawl along my arm, negotiating the spaces between, under and over the hairs. I looked aside, and it flew away. In this small town out on the edge of the prairie, Laura, Mae, Margaret and I sat around a small glass table outside on the patio, watching a rabbit feed her babies. We drank coffee with our dessert, Laura’s new specialty – lemon semifreddo. But “I kiss even better than I cook,” reads her latest hand-sewn embroidery.
As the sun began to set, I noticed how quiet it was around us. The highways were miles away, the village’s main street was blocks away. No trucks idled at the nearby elevator, and the grassy straight-down-the-row alley rested between the occasional motorized scooter and golf cart. I noticed too, how calm I felt, and how unhurried my thoughts were. In fact, sitting here, I had much less of a monkey mind than usual.
Who needs meds when you can sit on Mae’s back porch?
As Jesus got into the boat his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, and the boat was nearly swamped by waves. But Jesus was asleep.
If a wild tornado and hailstorm blew across the prairie and the sky turned black, then green, then yellow, and we could barely hear each other over the awful commotion in the sky, and the tree above us split and fell, what then?
Jesus is asleep. How long, O Lord, how long, before we awaken you in our fright?
Lord, save us! We are perishing! But Jesus, awakened, asked, “Why are you terrified, O ye of little faith?”
I don’t know how the disciples answered that question, or if they were even abashed by it as they struggled to bail the boat and keep it upright. They didn’t have time to reflect right then. And of course, there in Fisher, Illinois in the midst of a hypothetical tornado, we also would not have time to think.
So have a little practice session right now, while you are at peace and the air around you is so still and lovely that you can barely breathe, and the sky is blue, blue like a robin’s egg. Would you be terrified if it all changed in a flash? Where is your faith?
God doesn’t waste anything. He’ll have me digging deep inside myself for an answer to that question. My faith? I saw it in here somewhere. What’s the difference between faith on a peaceful evening and faith in a deadly tornado blowing me across the yard? God never changes. How can I get hold of his coattails and not let go?
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid. (T.S. Eliot, “Prufrock”)
Merton says you can’t have faith without doubt. That helps a little. I don’t need to summon up a hailstorm with wild winds just to find my faith, which sleeps nestled between doubt #1 and doubt #2, waiting for its time to thrive. It’s not asleep yet, though. Not quite time for bed.
So, now I will deal with you in my own way, O Israel! And since I will deal thus with you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel.
On this peaceful evening as I am seized by its beauty in this place with these friends, my faith expresses itself in gratitude and thanksgiving rather than doubt and fear. I know nothing lasts forever. Storms come. That’s all right. Then they go.
I’ll just breathe in the night air for now, love and be loved.
(Amos 3-4, Psalm 5, Psalm 130, Matthew 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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