The View
10/6

     Went to church yesterday, and it wasn’t that bad.  The cooler weather has perked up most folks and there weren’t nearly as many heads nodding off as there were a few weeks ago when the air conditioner was straining to keep it below 85 in the sanctuary.  What the preacher probably thought was the result of his of his longish sermon, was  more likely due to extreme warmth.  But we’d never tell him that.  The longer he thinks he’s putting people to sleep, the shorter his sermons get.  And not even the cool weather perks people up as much as that little phrase, “In conclusion....”
     With cooler weather we can only pray that cooler heads begin to prevail.  A lot of rash decisions are made in the summertime heat, setting the stage for  seasons of regret.  It couldn’t get much hotter than working on a surveying crew in the glaring Florida summer sun; and even with a youthful, head full of hair my scalp got sunburned, and my skull felt baked, and I could feel what few brain cells I had left melting into a mirky, gray stew.  Not conducive conditions for astute decision making.  And sure enough, that was the summer when I decided to get married, quit two decent jobs and go back to school.  Grace and the love of a good woman intervened in the first decision, and I was blessed with many seasons of pleasure.  But the second decision left me with massive student loan debt, walls lined with cinderblock and board book shelves, and the haunting suspicion that the time spent making intangible, even questionable, contributions to society would have been better used planning for suburban sprawl, or serving up drinks to the suburbanites who’d live there.   If I’d a waited until fall to make those decisions, I’d probably be CEO of a large land design company and own a chain of bars, which is where I used to work those summer nights of long ago.  However, the cool headed clarity that comes with autumn might have brought a certain degree of discernment to the woman who, in heat of summer, agreed to marry me.  I got one decisive hit in the heat of that summer, and I was only up twice, so I’m batting .500.  Only hope my summer time hit has brought in a run or two for her as well.  
     Cooler heads.  Now that its fall, maybe these will prevail.  With the stock market up and down like a yo-yo, and the financial news grim, panic and frenzy are in the air.  Everything seems to be governed by fear,  a sort of fear based management.  Some of the fears are real and, for not just a few folks, they’ve materialized right under their noses as foreclosures, loss of jobs, loss of investments, loss of retirement savings, and loss of income.  But the hot heads won’t fix this.  Knee jerk reactions bring seasons of regret.  Now, at least, we have the weather going for us.   Fall is a season for discernment. 
     Except during an election year when the fog of willful disillusionment rolls across the land.  The “lies, damn lies and statistics,” as Mark Twain called them, pollute the airwaves like a giant oil spill might slime a pristine coast, a possibility greatly increased by a government that is the best big-oil money can buy.   God told us to “till and keep” the earth, not drill then weep over its destruction.   But self-inflicted environmental disasters don’t hold a candle to the political, social, international, financial, and deadly catastrophes wrought by  fear mongers in high places, and allowed by a fearful, paniced public.    As we know, some fears are grounded.  But when they are grounded in bold faced lies, misrepresentations; fueled by heated rhetoric and accompanied with deadly serious assertions of chaos and calamity unless all our communications are monitored, the result is, well, we’ve seen what the result is; we’re living in it.  We are so afraid.  And who can we trust?  The government.  Sure, and let me sell you some ocean front property in Montana, if you believe that.  “Put not your trust in princes,” the psalmist writes.   National security is being contracted out to private militias, social security is far from it, the Securities and Exchange long ago exchanged security for rampant greed, and even our most sacred institutions, our banks, have sold us out, and we’re being left with the bill. 
     We are running scared.  And fearful people do rash things.  There are actuarial types and risk managers who actually count on it.  How one computes hysteria, I don’t know, but just thinking that it’s being done sends shivers down my spine.   But I wonder, as we circle up the wagons and anxiously prepare for the worst, what might faith look like? 
     Faith looks like twenty two people with hammers and saws enlarging a woman’s bathroom so it will accommodate her wheelchair.  Faith looks like the $10.00 bill for the Deacon’s fund that came from one of the homeless women that stayed with us last winter.  Faith looks like a young couple flying to Mozambique to build a church, and faith is an African congregation singing and praying and worshiping in a sanctuary for the first time ever.  Faith looks like the lady whose retirement savings were gobbled up by the greed now gone bust, yet still spending Thursdays volunteering at Urban Ministry.   Faith is the bank VP bearing heartless burden of the financial meltdown, praying with a coworker whose just lost his job.  Faith is the wide-eyed tenth grader whose summer mission work left seeds of compassion taking root in her soul.  Faith is a church unafraid to help a dying woman die a little easier, and a lot more joyfully. 
     Fear blinds us to faith.  But faith, not in the “princes,” but in the One who made heaven and earth, lets us face the fear, and see through it to what truly matters.   Things are looking mighty scary.  But keep looking.  The One who commands, “Be not afraid,” is there too. 
    
     May the crisp, fall days bring clarity to you,
     May the eyes of faith see God’s work anew.