Last night I had my first big storm event experience as a member of the fire department. A major front moved through complete with torrential downpours and high winds, a combination that is quite unfriendly to power lines. Starting in the afternoon, we had call after call of lines down and resulting fires. After a few different stops, I landed on a call where the entire telephone pole had snapped off and all the wires were in the road making it impassible. Though much work in the fire department has involved rushing people to the hospital, checking out alarms, helping with car accidents and occasionally putting out an actual fire, keeping people from driving into downed power lines was not an active endeavor.
We had to keep people from barreling around the curve into what was a very dangerous situation. This meant waiting as a cautionary presence. There was the occasional trip up the hill to light and place some new flares. There was also the occasional walk to make sure there wasn't a new and/or expanding brush fire. But mostly we waited for the electric company to come and fix the problem.
I remember joking to my partner last night, "Has anyone ever gone stir crazy and run off into the woods?" To which he replied with a smile, "Why? Do you want to be the first?" The other part of the equation was that I had left my phone in the car. Without going too deeply into the reason, my phone had started to act funny and I since I have not uploaded some of my son's pictures I didn't want to risk breaking the phone and losing everything. So I sat and waited in the dark silence. In that quiet, I was given reprieve from all the ways we try to distract ourselves in our daily lives. It was unnervingly still and it was deeply and forcefully contemplative.
Sometimes we are called to wait. It must have been what the disciples experienced after Jesus' death. Even if they had been told that Jesus would come back, the tragedy left them alone waiting in the upper room. It is hard to believe that there is a certainty in waiting for ConEd, but standing between the reality of the cross and the hope of the resurrection surpasses all other moments of delayed fulfillment. In the midst of such waiting Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said "peace be with you." He comes to us too in all the in-between moments in our lives. In whatever way that you are waiting in your spiritual life right now, know that God is coming to bring you peace.
See you in church,
Fr. Josh