Common Prayer

 

This past spring nature was bursting forth in all its glory, and we were shut down. In the middle of a pandemic the natural world continued on its way. And so in a sense the coronavirus was contained within our heads, within human motivations, concerns, and movements. Nature soared on alone. Until, in my neighborhood in Tucson, the evening of June 5th. Even as we gathered to toast the sunset with a rooftop glass of champagne, we could see lightning strike neighboring hills to the west. That was the beginning of the Bighorn Fire, which lasted for five weeks, consuming much of the dry brush, grass, trees, and even saguaro in a wide swath of Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Foothills to our north. For us it was close and so close in our attention for those days and weeks. On occasion the winds would change and smoke would drift down to us. At night we could see the flames on the mountain and during the day the aircraft dowsing them.

Nature began to take a turn. Of course this was months after the coronavirus pandemic came to us. March 15th was the last day this past spring when I preached and celebrated in person with a congregation. By Saint Patrick’s Day everyone had gotten the message: mask, distance, hand-wash, test, trace, treat, repeat. Eventually con permiso we could gather outdoors in small numbers at a safe distance.

It was depressing! And unnerving. We have had several smoldering crises on top of each other this year. Climate change, which is a force multiplier for every other catastrophe, layered on top of the wildfire season - which had just really gotten going when the Bighorn Fire ended - as well as the coronavirus pandemic with its public health and economic and political effects.

Even the President now is in isolation as he announced Thursday night just after midnight that he and his wife had tested positive for coronavirus. Fourteen days at home, if all goes well.

So the world is not what it was, or what we thought it would be, and what it will become is in a limbo status of nascency, as ‘ordinary life’ seems suspended for the duration. But what if for now this is ordinary life? It is an extraordinary Ordinary Time in the church - as Ordinary Time is another name for the season after Pentecost. We call this the long green season - dysfunctionally in Tucson as it gets hotter and drier longer over the trending years.

I was home for the one great monsoon storm of this season - wasn’t that an hour? And now we wait. For the summer heat to abate - it will get cooler, as the seasons turn; for the pandemic precautions and professional efforts to abate the pandemic; and then for the politicians to wake up and do something about the longterm causes and responses to the crises of our time.

All of this, and yet we celebrate. For the works of the Lord are good: in the Canticle we read this morning in response to the first lesson we are reminded - and the cosmic order, the Earth and its creatures, the people of God, are all exhorted to bless the Lord, to praise God and highly exalt him forever.

Why do we do this? For all around us despite our concerns, and some of them very close to home, the work of God and of the people of God who are his hands upon the Earth, continues.

The hungry are fed, the sick are tended, the dead are mourned, the bereft are comforted, the homeless are sheltered, and the unemployed find new dignity in work. All this is going on.

Not at the rate we would want. Very slowly. But if we are part of bending the arc of history toward justice, if we are among those who work and pray for the good things of earth to be cherished, sustained, and shared, then we are moving forward into a future with hope.

For the Lord has assured us, “I have a plan for you, for your good and not for harm, a future with hope."