Haze

We were having one of those hot and hazy summer days that the East Coast can so often swelter under. The humidity was up there. The air hung very heavy.

We got on the Staten Island Ferry in the morning (after dealing with a long story you're all not going to get about car problems and finding a mechanic here who could do the work and get the car back to us so that we don't worry about being able to leave here at the end of the week and continue our journey - - but if you're ever on Staten Island needing car repair - go to Tim's (AFTER finding him, I found out he was written up last week in the paper. See here).

Anyway . . . we got on the ferry to head to Manhattan. And realized that Manhattan was lost in the haze.

The day before it had sparkled in the morning light. Then coming back to Staten Island at sunset, as the lights twinkled in the twilight, the city was absolutely stunningly beautiful. Even this die-hard love-the-woods/don't-understand-the-city woman thought it was stunningly beautiful.

But on this day it was all different - - this hot and humid and hazy day. This day the city hid in the haze. The world looked ugly and shadowy and lost.

Haze - that awful deadening smoggy world blurring stuff, created when the natural heat and humidity that can challenge our world is combined with our own pollution - our over-consumption lack of concern for this world, pollution (yes, made by my car that I'm so happy to get back so that I can run some more miles on it! None of us are free from the challenges of our lives and our beliefs and our best instincts, all colliding.) Heat and humidity and pollution. Haze is an ugly thing.

Haze seems to have a lot in common with what I've been hearing about from outside the walls of our churches. There is natural heat and humidity - natural challenges that come from a life of faith. But there is also that pollution bit. That extra, human created piece that comes in to bring the haze. There are so many things that pollute, and create haze in our church life. And those outside try to see through it all, and find no sparkle. No beauty.

I KNOW that the faith that holds me can sparkle so magnificently. I've seen it. I've stood in awe before its wonder. God loves me beyond my wildest, my absolutely wildest, imaginings. What could be more stunning, more beautiful than that? And every now and then this world manages to get a glimpse of that beauty.

But then we just go on creating more pollution to mix with the heat and the haze. And they turn away, unable to see anything worth being in wonder over. Anything worthy of moving their hearts and their souls.

I know that in the physical world, often Global Warming seems so big, so overwhelming, that we think we can't do much about it. But I have become convinced that each one of us matters in the movement away from it. I cannot control others, but I can control what I do. How much I consume. I can make changes in my own life. And those changes will help change the world.

And that is where I need to move in my spiritual life as well - within the life of the community of faith. I cannot control what others do - the things that the world sees as pollution, as anger and hatred and having not much to do with Jesus. (And despite my strong desire to simply go weed all that 'badness' out, last Sunday's gospel stands in reminder to me that it is not my job to go weeding!) I'm not saying that there are not stands to be taken, and issues which need to be addressed. But I can do everything in my own corner of this life, in my own place in this world, in the ways I go about taking stands and addressing issues and proclaiming the gospel that create less Christian haze. Ways to live and preach and love and follow Jesus that create space for the wonder to sparkle through.