Mercy Drops in a Thirsty Late Summer

 The Spreading Creek Fire July 2014. ©Darwin Wiggett

Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians

September 2018

Mercy Drops in a Thirsty Late Summer

With the heat, drought, and smoke of the last month and a half, many of us have hunkered down into a “I can’t bear to look” posture (or perhaps, more exactly, an “I can’t bear to breathe” posture.)   OSF has cancelled 22 performances due to the smoke, a record.  The local economy is suffering, with several hotels, shops, and restaurants—with extremely small profit margins in the best of times—wondering whether they can squeak by and still be in business after the fire season ends.  The dark pall totally obscuring our normally clear blue skies and bright sunshine and cool moon- and star-light reminds us of the miasma put out by the “dark satanic mills” described by William Blake, or the stench and evil gloom of Saruman’s Orthanc or Sauron’s Mordor in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  And while concern about better management of our forests, as recommended by our Congressman Greg Walden, is clearly in order, so also is concern over the drought and higher ambient temperatures resulting from industry-induced climate change now reported by the California Environmental Protection Agency and in Scientific American.   Much of our malaise comes from the unspoken question, “Is this the new normal?”   In the words of Eucharistic Prayer C we wonder, what have we done to “this fragile earth, our island home?”    And so when we do look up from our beaten down posture, we are haunted by the specters of more and more environmental deregulation, sordid political drama in Washington D.C., and the mid-term elections. 

I have always been deeply moved by a hymn by Isaac Watts that talks about drought, rain, nature turned upside down, and our “fears, suspicions, and complaints.”  Though not in our hymnal, it appears in the Sacred Harp tradition to the fuging tune harmony “Africa” by early American patriot composer William Billings: 

“Now shall my inward joys arise,
And burst into a Song;
Almighty Love inspires my Heart,
And Pleasure tunes my Tongue.

God on his thirsty Sion-Hill
Some Mercy-Drops has thrown,
And solemn Oaths have bound his Love
To show'r Salvation down.

Why do we then indulge our Fears,
Suspicions and Complaints?
Is he a God, and shall his Grace
Grow weary of his saints?

Can a kind Woman e'er forget
The Infant of her Womb,
And 'mongst a thousand tender Thoughts
Her Suckling have no Room?

Yet, saith the Lord, should Nature change,
And Mothers Monsters prove,
Sion still dwells upon the Heart
Of everlasting Love.

Deep on the Palms of both my Hands
I have engrav'd her Name;
My Hands shall raise her ruin'd Walls,
And build her broken Frame.”

Africa -- His Majestie's Clerkes 

We need to work on resolving the problems and healing our troubled world.  We are stewards of this beautiful creation—and this means we are responsible, not in charge of it.  Our survival depends on us acting in harmony with nature, being honest in our science and business practices, and no longer hiding the real costs of our economic activity (be they the harm of pollution or carbon emissions) by casting them into a commons where no one takes responsibility and the biosphere dies.  To destroy our world in some misguided and dishonest hunt for greater profit and wealth or some false notion of national greatness is a deadly betrayal of our basic responsibilities to God, each other, and the future.  We need to stop hunkering down, stand up, and get to work.  A starting point lies in the very specters that haunt us, like the mid-term elections.  Our names are engraved in the palms of God.  God will shower salvation down, build up the broken walls of Zion, and remember us—creatures and part of the natural order—and heal us all. 

Grace and Peace

Fr. Tony+