Second Sunday in Lent

It is a great blessing to note that during my 7 ½  at St. Mary’s, I have had very few moments of real unhappiness.  The weather this past week and the attendant cleaning up reminded me of the high proportion of those unhappy moments that involve cold weather, and particularly snow.  With the repairs that have been done on the building it’s not as difficult as it was a few years ago, but winter is not this old girl’s best season of the year – I mean this nearly 125 year old girl, not me.  Even though the worst leaks are plugged and most parts of the building are warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing, cold weather and snow seem to highlight the weak points of our parish and the building we inhabit.  It’s been two years since we’ve had as much snow as fell on Thursday.  The magical thinking of two mild winters came to an abrupt halt.  Yesterday the shock finally wore off and all over the city you saw people excavating the cars they had left behind and doing the finer work of clearing driveways and sidewalks.  Watching people negotiate the ice and snow and dealing with it myself both here and home had me imagining how it could serve as a metaphor for those things that separate us from God; those things that are very much on our minds in this season of Lent.

You could argue with me that an aspect of nature that is very useful to the earth and beautiful to the eye should not be considered a metaphor for sin.  I don’t mean that snow is bad – well maybe I do – I am at least an honorary California girl.  What I intend as the metaphor is the way that a big snowfall constrains our lives and how we interact with those constraints.

On days with snowfall like last Thursday many people stay indoors.  It’s too uncomfortable and too risky to be out there.   The media, obsess on the danger, having discovered winter precipitation as another opportunity for whipping up end of the world scenarios.  Predictions of snowmageddon and snowpocalypse keep people glued to their television sets and computer screens in the days before a winter storm.  Each one now has its own name, just like hurricanes.  The anticipation of big bad weather is not unlike the anxiety of anticipating an unflinching encounter with our own moral and spiritual shortcomings.  Most of us want to retreat from that reality in the same way as we do with snow – staying morally and spiritual indoors as it were, warm and dry before the fire, watching it as if all of those failures belonged to someone else – I’m not like that.  Think about people who commit high profile crimes and become the subject of news.  They are frequently described as if they were not human – they are animals.  We who observe their behavior are surely not capable of such terrible things.   But is that true?  Are we distinct from them because of our moral superiority or because our life circumstances were kinder to us than theirs were to them?  We shelter indoors keeping those hard questions outside.

There are those who brave the storm even at its worst.  For some, their presence at work is essential.  They are carefully prepared and equipped to fulfill those obligations – or their workplace has made provisions to get them where they need to be.  For others, no snowstorm is going to keep them from doing what they want to do.  They’re not afraid and they’re good at driving in snow and all those warnings from the police and highway patrol don’t apply to them.  Some of those foolhardy types get where they need to go without greater hindrance than a slow crawl through traffic.  Some of them – and you may have seen them driving huge vehicles with giant tires way too fast for conditions can’t resist the urge to weave in and out of traffic, apparently believing that the laws of physics somehow don’t apply to them.  They put themselves and others at risk.  Some of these folks who challenge the storm are rudely awakened by an accident.  Many simply get stuck in the snow and have to abandon their vehicles, trusting to the mercy of someone who is willing to rescue them out in the short term.  At some point the mess they have made gets cleaned up.  Their various rescuers are often among those I mentioned earlier whose essential work in hazardous conditions is characterized by careful preparation, vehicles that can negotiate the worst weather, the knowledge and skill that come with long and careful training and the grace of God.   We’ve all experienced moments of cluelessness or bravado our own moral and spiritual vulnerability when we believed that we were above it all.  For some the consequences of that insensibility were harsh enough to change our lives for better or worse.  And many of us have had the experience of being a moral and spiritual lifeline, being sufficiently attentive and prepared and inspired by God to help someone struggling with a terrible crisis.

When the snow stops falling, life goes on.  If the crisis of the blizzard has left no lasting effects, attention turns to the task of clearing it all away.  Hopefully there is a shovel nearby .  Even the last one grabbed out of the bin at the hardware store on the way home from work the night before the storm – will still move snow.  Most people begin somewhere near the front door, after preparing themselves with appropriate clothing.  Sometimes the snow is light and powdery like it was here last week.  Sometimes it’s heavy and wet and sometimes it is preceded by a rain of ice that forms a glaze underneath the snowfall.  Each condition has its own challenges, risks and hazards.  Each person who sets out to clear away snow has his or her strengths and weaknesses.  Sometimes it is difficult to get a foothold on slippery pavement.  Sometimes the task is overwhelming and the effort and exertion result in injury or even death.  I’ve noticed among my near neighbors that people go at the task of clearing snow very differently.  Some seem to be waiting for the last flake to fall.  They’ve finished before the rest of us even get started.   The paths they carve through the snow are straight and squared off and they scrape the pavement cleanly.    Others take a pragmatic approach, clearing a careful path for the car to enter the driveway, but not caring much about what it looks like from across the street.   My understanding is that property owners are required to clear the public sidewalks in front of our homes.  Some of my neighbors are kind enough to take care of the sidewalk in front of a neighbor’s house.  But I’m always surprised to see how many people leave the sidewalks in front of their homes uncleared.   Their inattention forces pedestrians to walk down the middle of the street narrowed by walls of snow pushed up by the plow. 

Yesterday afternoon began coming out in force to dig their cars out from the curb and carve spaces for them to park.  I noticed that my neighbor across the street, the one with the perfectly straight, perfectly scraped sidewalks was carrying snow from his curb over to our side of the street instead of tossing it on the space between the curb and sidewalk on his side.  Mabe he figures that he can’t keep the cars from splashing dirty slush on his side of the road, but he doesn’t want it piling up in his yard.  

Lent is a time to consider how we approach the task of clearing our moral and spiritual pavement.  Do your efforts focus on a pleasing outward appearance?  the path of least resistance?  Do you go beyond your own driveway or front steps and clear the sidewalk in front of the house?  Do the sins you recognize in yourself get blamed on others or outside influences?

            St. Mary’s is required to clear the sidewalks around the church building and our parking lots for the people who park here during the week.  We hire a company to clear the parking lot but we do the sidewalks ourselves and it takes time to get everything cleared.  It’s interesting to hear the different reactions from passers-by as we are working to get the snow out of the way of people trying to get to work.  Some are appreciative of any effort to make it easier for them to navigate through the snow and ice.  Others have words for advice about how it should be done.  Others complain that it should have been finished earlier or done better.  They seem oblivious to any sense of the effort, commitment and good will that go into getting the job done. 

Morally and spiritually we don’t exist in a vacuum.  We live in common with other people who are walking their own snowy path.  We benefit from the efforts of others.  In reality, any moral and spiritual snow clearing we do in support of the common good will always receive mixed reactions.   They are a good lesson for our own response to the efforts of others.

            I live on a street that serves as an alternate route for emergency vehicles.  It is also used by personnel at St. Luke’s Hospital, so we frequently see the snowplow early.  I remember Kansas City decades ago, lacking resources to deal with heavy snowfall and leaving many streets unplowed to await the spring thaw.  It’s better now, but whenever it snows, find that I’m surprised when I hear that someone’s street has not yet been cleared.  I forget that a fortunate choice of address makes my life easier.  When we bought a house, I had no idea that a fire station would be built two blocks away or that its proximity to St. Luke’s meant that it would be plowed earlier than other streets.  Our neighborhood did nothing to deserve that convenience  nor did we make any sacrifice in exchange for it.  My friends and colleagues who are still struggling to get their cars as far as the nearest corner have done nothing wrong. 

Life does not treat everyone equally.  Some people are desperately poor, some are wealthy.  Some struggle with ill health, some take great risks and suffer few consequences.  Some have everything handed to them and make the most of it; others squander their resources.  Some never have a chance to live productive lives.  Wealth and success are not rewards for moral superiority; poverty is not immoral.  Privilege may be earned through seniority, meritorious service or accomplishment, but frequently it has more to do with where you’re born or the family you’re born into than with anything else.

In this season of careful consideration of the way we live our lives and our relationship with God, ice and snow slow us down and offer us some lessons about the life of the spirit.  Their substance and weight can be metaphors for our sinful nature.  The uneven footing that they impose makes our vulnerability and our dependence upon God more real.  Those aspects of humanity can lose some of their force in the abstract for those of us who live a privileged existence in relation to most of the world. Snow and ice are a good reality check.

When I was a kid I remember very clearly a day at the end of a long winter when snow had been deep on the ground long past the point of being pretty or fun.  Cold had kept us inside for what seemed like several weeks.  One Saturday the temperature climbed into the 50s.  The snow vanished and I recall the sound of water trickling from downspouts and chunks of snow falling from roofs and the feeling of the spongy ground underfoot.  Our moms had been stuck indoors with us long enough to make them happy to send us outside to play in the mud.  We argued about having to wear coats.  The sudden rise in temperature and the bright sun made a jacket seem unnecessary.  That feeling of liberation from the snowy, icy prison of winter is, in a modest way, like the sense of liberation from sin that we have from God’s love and forgiveness in the person of Jesus.  

It’s supposed to snow again in a couple of days.   While your indoors watching it fall and while you’re clearing it away, take time for the work of Lent.