A Divine Cleansing

I know we progressive Christians aren’t all about cleansing rituals, but the two waves of thunderstorms that rolled through Columbia yesterday made me wish for my days in Germany when you would be stuck in the rain without an umbrella waiting on the bus inevitably at the one bus stop that had a cracked roof and there would be no way of avoiding getting soaked. Or those late summer field hockey games that there would be no thunder and therefore no rain delay. There was nothing left, but to keep playing.

And today in both waves of thunderstorms, I had the intense desire to run out in the rain. Maybe, it’s my baptist heritage and the power of being completely immersed in water, but there’s something about the complete understanding that there is nothing that you can do to prevent being totally and completely soaked. It’s humbly and turns your brain on high in order to try to solve the problem or get to some kind of shelter.

It reminds me how incredibly conveniently we live. In many cases, extreme weather is inconvenient at most and unnoticed at worst. I can remember days in my classroom, especially during testing when I would realize that there would be indoor recess, and I would wonder if there was any way that our little ecosystem could survive another amount of time together in the room. And I would wonder how much trouble it would be to take 23 students out into the rain.

These are sensible or practical considerations, of course, these are childish whims, but they still linger on the edge of my thoughts. Sometimes I let them take center stage.