My little home sits on a concrete slab - no basement. I count that as a plus when my neighbors drag their wet and molding belongings out of their basements after a flood. But it is not a plus in the winter, when the cold radiates up from the floor and acts like a brinicle - an icy finger of death. I watched a BBC Earth clip about brinicles - how thriving sea life in Antarctica, protected from temperature extremes in the deep, can be caught in these fingers of ice that grow down to the sea floor and imprison everything they touch. I feel the cold seeping into the floors and into my feet, and I feel caught in a brinicle. I want to get away - run - swim - get out of its grasp, but I just feel the coldness. Caught in a brinicle of never-ending coldness.
Coldness in the floors of my home. Coldness in our weather. Coldness in our civil discourse. Coldness in our politics. Coldness in how our current political administration crushed USAID and abruptly stopped responding to the desperate needs of people throughout the world whom we promised to help; Coldness in the way we respond to our friends/allies; Coldness in treating civil servants like grifters instead of like people who chose to serve the public instead of embracing the perks of working in the private sector. Coldness in the current administration setting the example for our country to be the land of cruelty, lies, of disrespect, vindictiveness, bullying, impulsiveness, short-sightedness, ignorance of history, manipulation, toxic masculinity, unencumbered selfishness - a place where relationships are reduced to transactions that must favor us and disadvantage the other in order for it to be a "good deal." I feel frozen to the core by this icy finger of death that is moving through America right now, and killing the values that America, though an imperfect nation, once strove to imperfectly embody.
Then I remember - no matter how cold it gets and no matter how cold I feel, this frozen death cannot occupy the core of my being. That is where God is. And the very fire of God cannot be extinguished by a brinicle, or empire or by any circumstance, no matter how dysfunctional or dire it may be. As I focus on God's fire and do everything I can to be open to it, this inner fire grows and fills me with warmth and hope that the icy finger of death can never touch. I begin to melt.
It has been a long time since I've written in this blog - partly because I could not find words to meet our current reality, and partly because my mind had been caught by this icy finger of death and I was immobilized. Thank goodness God has been slowly thawing me out, and reminding me that in Christ I have hope and great freedom - even in the dystopian reality in which we are living. And today God used a stranger to melt me further.
This morning I got some unsweetened green iced tea, and on the side of the container the barista wrote: Just Keep Swimming. I laughed all the way to my toes, and thanked her for reminding me about Dory and her little song. That is what we are called to do right now - just keep swimming. We swim when we just keep living with love, compassion, mercy and justice. We swim when we just keep speaking truth to power. We swim when we just keep matching our values with our actions....when we just keep being our authentic and true selves and just keep embracing repentance (change direction) when we get off track. We are swimming when we just keep looking out for those who are marginalized and in need of help...and when we just keep following the example of the Christ - and allow Christ's light to shine in and through us. Just by being who God has called us to be - irregardless of the circumstances - and letting Christ's light shine through us, we keep swimming.
Tomorrow we celebrate the Transfiguration - the time when a few disciples were able to see Jesus for exactly who he was. We will ponder how we, too, can experience transfiguration. And we will remember the things that prevent this from happening. Then on Wednesday the season that embraces direction change through prayer, fasting and service will begin. Lent is such a holy time - such a transformative time. I love it for that, even though I often find the process of transformation to be painful. But it would be more painful still to remain frozen. Even more painful to watch my country embark down the road it is on without challenging what is happening. More painful still if I forgot that within me I carry the Spirit of God - a fire that can melt any icy finger of death!
And so we swim -
