Blog Post 54 November 7, 2024 “Fire!”
I arrived in California the other night and the sunset as we were landing was brilliant—the sky over the mountains had turned a deep orange-pink with streaks of purple, almost like the mountains were on fire. I am here as my next-to-last scheduled trip of my sabbatical to see my son, Alex, who lives here.
While I know you are all tired of hearing this, the entire first day of my trip, yesterday, I was sick. My body is just not able to catch up with healing. So I stayed in my hotel room, holed up with reading books for my final sabbatical trip next week, visited with my son, and drinking Gatorade Zero. (Do NOT get the cucumber-lime flavor, no matter who tells you it tastes good!!)
One of the benefits of being in this hotel is that breakfast is provided, so I went down yesterday morning to get bananas and yogurt, which seemed like the right fuel for my body. The breakfast place was nearly empty, and I wondered who usually fills up these rooms.
But this morning I went down, feeling SO much better than yesterday, thank God, and the place was packed with people, including lots of young families. What was the difference? I overheard one of the young mothers telling someone why they were here—overnight, fast-spreading fires had started and large areas of the Camarillo Ridge area had to be evacuated. She showed a picture on her phone of the fire behind her house and said her kids were terrified.
When I was sat in my room yesterday absorbing lots of things—the results of the presidential election, my physical health challenges that have been hard to manage, the books I was reading and the news. Like every hotel room, mine has a TV and I actually understand how to use it. I spent a lot of time last night watching the news coverage of the fires in Camarillo, fueled by the Santa Ana winds and the drought conditions, as they consumed acre after acre, home after home. I learned that live embers can travel for three miles on the wind, and that fire can ‘shelter’ in the roots of trees for days without detection, only to spring into flames when the conditions are right. It was horrifying to me, a real-life disaster movie. As the helicopters panned the ridge, I could see embers and tiny fires burning from far away, tiny specks that looked like glowing goblin eyes, each capable of intense heat and damage. Each capable of taking life and home from any number of residents, as has already happened in just 24 hours. As I type this, the fire is 0% contained.
I’m writing about this because I know that experiences like the election results from yesterday have produced a variety of responses in people. Some are triumphant and others are despondent. I get it. We all have ideals about what our country stands for, and how we can be a beacon of hope for the world. We have convictions about what good leadership stands for and exemplifies. For some, we have now met those standards and for others we have destroyed them. Many people voted for either candidate and were able to claim: “This is how I believe my faith leads me to vote.” I can’t argue with that because there are so many factors that come into play when voting in a consequential election like this one. I don’t get to be the arbiter of God’s vision for politics, as tempting as it is for pastors at times, as much as people may ask pastors to do just this. “Vote faithfully” pretty much covered my gut advice to all of us. I know that’s how I voted and I still feel convicted about my choice, feel as though my choice best reflected my understanding of God’s kingdom goals. (Some people are offended by the word kingdom—I opt to keep it because it is the only perfect kingdom we will ever experience and it is how Jesus refers to God’s reign.)
Anyhow, this morning felt like a slap in the face for me. The election is of vital importance, I know, but the need for God’s work on earth will never end. I don’t want to get distracted by national leaders to the point that it renders my work as a Christian believer unnecessary. In other words, no matter the results, we have work to do. We have always had work to do, and depending on how the election affected you, perhaps you feel there is even more to do in the world to promote justice, mercy, love and compassion.
When I listened to the woman in the breakfast room, and I saw her pictures, I was meeting my neighbor. I was aware that the homes that I had watched burn last night belonged to people nearby, that the majority of these new families might be in this hotel because of the wildfires burning twenty miles from here. No matter the results of any election, our mission remains the same. We are to love God and to love God’s people, not just theoretically but literally, practically. My prayer is that we don’t get so distracted about what didn’t happen in an election, or that we put so much faith in one leader, that we forget the way Jesus ministered and blessed the people he met—one at a time, relationship by relationship. Our commitment to our neighbors continues, deepens, perhaps becomes even more essential at times like these when political leadership changes.
I have written a lot about nourishment in this blog, but it has been mostly my own nourishment and care on which I focused. As my sabbatical comes to an end, I am grateful for the change that is making me think again about how we nourish each other. Perhaps I needed a break from that, and I hate writing that phrase, trust me. My hope is that I will see the world with clearer eyes again, with a spirit softened by time away, with ears that will hear the call of my brothers and sisters more clearly when I return. If so—yay God! Thanks be to God for helping me refresh and re-nourish myself as I now remember my call to serve my brothers and sisters wherever I am. Today that’s Santa Clarita, CA and while I do not yet know what practical help I can provide, I know I can pray, and you can pray, for the safety of the hundreds of firefighters, the sheriff departments who are coordinating evacuations, the teams who will assess the final damages to property, for the homeowners and families who felt safe just yesterday morning, only to learn by 10 am that they were in grave danger, for the children who will dream of fires for months and years, and who have lost a sense of safety in their world—we pray for all of them.
No matter how the election went for you, never forget that we, too, have been elected and chosen. God chose US to do the work of caring for each other and showing the world in practical ways what it means to love our neighbors, no matter what political party they belong to, no matter who they voted for. In the baptismal service of the Episcopal Church it asks us this: “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” Will we?
