A Call for Spiritual Maturity: Diocesan Convention 2005
ACC rep and Executive Council member from Lexingotn face decisions.
Living Together for Mission: The Bishop's Address to the 109th Diocesan Convention
Resolutions Passed at Convention
X-ercixing: The Kitty Blockade
Reflection: Storming to Easter
By Kay Collier McLaughlin
It’s been a mild winter. March has attempted to roar
in like a lion, with a few dire forecasts that crowded the supermarkets
with folks who want to stock up on milk, bread and toilet paper lest they
find themselves housebound without. The actuality has been some mini-white-outs,
with the white stuff flying horizontally rather than vertically in strange
cyclical pattern with a warmish March sunshine. Snow outside my office
window on the north end of Lexington does not equal snow on the south
end and vice versa. And whatever the condition, the only guarantee is
that it won’t be that way for long. Now the most interesting part
about this non-winter has been reaction to it. (Mine and others I’ve
observed.) A forecast of snow from storm tracker TV (a moniker guaranteed
to make people’s blood race a bit), complete with a streaming reminder
of “winter storm warning” is the impetus for those supermarket
forays, searches for boots and parkas, and, if you happen to be in my
neighborhood, backing the car into the carport to assure traction for
an uphill climb. Once the snowfall begins, there are those who hunker
down in front of the fire with a sense of “isn’t this great?
I can’t go anywhere but here” ( or, I’m imprisoned here,
because it’s not safe outside), those who continue with business
as usual, which may or may not include the necessity of a run-out in the
white stuff, those who are super-worried and concerned about what might
(or might not) happen if …. and those who pull on all the gear and
venture out to see what the world is like in the snow.
Just happened to overhear a phone conversation — make that five
or six — occasioned by the forecast. Had to do with a morning meeting,
involving a few miles of travel. First it was on for sure. Then maybe.
They’d talk in the morning, early, and decide. Comparison of actual
snow on the ground at the moment. Better cancel now; it might not be safe
in the morning. MEETING CANCELLED. (Morning bulletin: windshields needed
scraping; roads dry.) Now, in all fairness, most of us around here remember
the BIG ICE STORM of 2001. The smartest thing to do in that kind of danger
was to hunker down and enjoy just being inside, and share electricity
and warm water if you were so blessed. Thankfully, those kinds of storms
are rare in Kentucky. Having experienced it, however, the possibility
of such danger is more real than it was before we knew it fi rst hand.
Before March has any chance to go out like a lamb, Holy Week and Easter
will remind us of the danger of living as – or in company of —
the Son of God. And it seems to me that whatever our reactions to the
storms of life, whether the forecasts, the almost-storms or the actual
ones, I am in danger. In danger from just hunkering down, whether in enjoyment
of isolation, or in fear of what may be outside my door. In danger from
going on about business as usual with not even a glance — much less
attention — to the storms of betrayal, indifference, cruelty, violence,
poverty, neglect — crucifixions of all kinds that surround me. In
danger from imagining worse-case scenarios that cause me to miss the best-case
ones, and the every day ones, as well, in all of my fears of unknowns.
In danger from adventuring without an anchor save for my own arrogant
certainties. In danger of believing that God is only to be found in the
serenity of quiet waters and their equivalent vistas in mountains and
plains. Moving into this Holy Week and the anticipation of Easter, I want
to begin to recognize that the most damaging storms in my life are those
which keep me from living in and with my Lord and my God, and my brothers
and sisters on this earth. I want to remember that the dangers of this
March’s responses are dangers before and beyond the season of sacrifice
we know as Lent. I want to know deep in my soul that the most important
storm is within me – where God will constantly create something
new, something truest of all, if I allow Him. If I listen for His song
in the midst of the storm, and learn to sing it. I want to know that Easter
is not about lilies and bunnies and the most artistic of eggs, but about
the storms of possibility and promise that overpowered the cross and the
tomb. That Easter in my soul is not about celestial harps and sweet feelings
of peace, but about a passion, an energy that will not be stilled. That
lives in the eye of the storm of life. He is risen, indeed. May I live
and love boldly into that storm.
© 2005 The Episcopal Diocese of Lexington