Fear

I've not done a reflection for a while. Today's gospel reading is the one where Jesus assures the disciples that he will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to be with them after he is gone. As I listened to the gospel today, I pondered the creative chaos bred by the Spirit.

Such creative chaos is present in storms as well.

Peace,

LLM

***

The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

(John 3:8)

I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, just east of tornado alley. The storms of the midwest can be threatening, cantankerous, unexpected. I fear these storms, not because I’ve ever experienced the terror of a tornado, but because their unruliness cannot be controlled or reigned in or stopped. They simply go until they wear themselves out. I have no influence over them. They are reminders of my humility. I can only stand in awe at the rush of water beating down on the earth, on cars, on buildings, on plants. Lightning splits the sky, a web both beautiful and terrifying; thunder rolls and shakes and deafens.

To this day such storms have me contemplating the safest place in whatever shelter I’m occupying. I take note of the presence of blankets and sturdy shoes. I avoid windows and check weather stations to see how immanent the threat. In other words, I exert control over the things that can be controlled.

Nevertheless, in recent years I have found myself needing thunderstorms. I desire the reminder that the world can be shaken, that stability is a human construct. Sometimes we are drawn to that which we fear most.

John’s gospel tells us of a holy unruliness: the Spirit blows where it wills. It moves and dances and creates and destroys. And this Spirt makes noise. That is the noise I crave. That is the noise that nudges and inspires. I frequently hope that the voice of the Spirit is loud and obnoxious. I want her voice to be as demanding as a thunderstorm in June.

Instead, she whispers.

Storms

This week's theme: Storms

I have always, to use an Austenian turn of phrase, been of an anxious disposition. When I was a little girl I used to sleep on the floor at the end of the hallway between the bedrooms because I was afraid of any number of things including but not limited to: demonic possession (thanks Roman Catholicism!), burglars, ghosts, my sleepwalking younger brother, and thunderstorms.

I have, for the most part, overcome many of these fears (partially because I no longer live in a creaky house surrounded by people who talk and walk in their sleep). One of the few fears I have not managed to master is my fear of and distaste for thunderstorms.

I am not talking about the occasional hard rain shower with a little thunder or lightening, but the huge windy, wild, midsummer storms we have here in the midwest. The kind of storms that can easily bring about hail and high winds. Pounding rain and tornados. While I no longer sleep on the floor in the hallway, when one of these storms blows up it takes every ounce of self-possesion and rationality I have not to run into the basement and cower under the stairs with a blanket over my head.

Storms do not bring out the best in me.

***

Storms

When we were young, we had a dog who was afraid of loud noises. Thunder, mainly. But also, the way cars backfired, the vacuum cleaner, the sound of my father's motorcycle pulling into the driveway. It was my job to walk him and more than once it started to storm. We lived in the country then, so, angry and drenched, I would have to half-drag all ninety pounds of frightened dog through the mud. Once, after a fight with my mother over clothing and money and grades and boys, I stormed from the house pulling the dog after me. After a few miles it began to rain and then to thunder. When the dog balked I pulled his leash ferociously, nearly choking him. He refused to move, just sat and looked at me and trembled until I knelt, put my arms around him, and wept.