Friday, September 20, 2024
Memorial of Saints Cornelius, Pope, and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Heat
Hide me in the shadow of your wings, that on waking I shall be content in your presence.
On this last day of summer, I miss Illinois because while hot weather might be continuing there, it is baking us here. I haven’t wanted to go outside after 9 am for weeks. So when I wake up in the morning, it’s to welcome another air conditioned day, sun shining, heat blazing, me dis-engaging too much too often from all the possibilities that await outdoors.
Today we’re spending time with Miles and Jasper driving between various air conditioned spots: Camp Mabry Texas Military Forces Museum, County Line BBQ on Lake Austin, Fire Station #31 and finally outside, hanging out in the shade under the Pennybacker Bridge not far from us across Lake Austin. Then maybe some ice cream, Amy’s, at the end. I’m glad the boys will be with us, because they don’t complain like I do about the heat. Air conditioning is part of their lives too, but going outside doesn’t seem to wilt their bodies or their spirit.
Our maintenance manager Scott spends most of his time outside here at Evolve Apartments. Yesterday we talked awhile while he was replacing an air conditioner. Pretty wilted after a couple hours in the direct midday sun. “I can’t imagine how people lived before these things,” he said. And of course both of us began to remember stories and movies made in the decades soon after Mr. Carrier designed the first air conditioner in July of 1902. Not many people believed in it then. When the choice was neither known nor available, we got along just fine. Too good to be true, anyway. Wiped our faces more often. We could just go watch a movie now and then. “Delightfully cool and freshing INSIDE!”
Scott and so many thousands of others work outside in the summer. Mostly they too get along just fine. They figure out ways. I remember my own near-heatstroke while I was weeding a soybean field in southern Illinois for my employer, Jacques Seed Company. My friends took care of me. We took time for water breaks, stayed in the shade a little more, but we did go back out into the field after a little while.
Scott and I brought up the obvious about the future: since air conditioning removes the hot air from inside and deposits it outside, will there come a time when the outside air is just too hot for our machines? Isn’t there a vicious cycle going on? Ten air conditioners will be sold every second between now and 2050. As the world warms, we need them even more, “not as a luxury, but as a lifesaver,” according to Harvard engineers.
As in other fields of science, a perspective that goes beyond profit-taking prevails. From Scientific American:
Cooling is a multi-faceted challenge and there isn’t one strategy or one answer. We need a combination of better buildings and cities, better technology and a better understanding that the true cost of air-conditioning extends beyond electric bills. What we do in one part of the world impacts the whole global environment.
Scientists, researchers and engineers don’t always get the last word. Accountants also matter. When a system like climate warming or climate cooling gets accusing headlines, most of us are too quick to blame someone else. Of course we are also to blame.
Show us your wondrous mercies, O Lord.
I’ve never seen a picture real or imagined of God wiping the sweat off his brow.
I am sure God sees us wiping the sweat off ours.
Neither engineers nor accountants get the last word. That belongs to God, and the “multi-faceted challenge that faces us includes, first of all, that concession we make to God, recognizing with eventual joy that God is the creator, and we are the created ones.
Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
 (1 Corinthians 15, Psalm 17, Matthew 11, Luke 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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