This blog has been interrupted for ....

I was working on a different blog post yesterday when my world started shaking... no, literally shaking.  It seems that a 5.8 earthquake centered about 80 miles from my location in Northern Virginia had struck.  I was at the grocery store and I felt dizzy - like my legs were rubbery and the ground was moving side to side and up and down under my feet.  When stuff started falling off the shelves, I knew it wasn't me.  Then we all looked around and said, "wow, I think that was an earthquake."  And then people started cleaning up and gong about their business... no panic - no evacuation - just buying cabbage and carrots for slaw and Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, which were on sale.

I texted my spouse to let him know that I was OK and when I finished picking up a few things, I went home.  The house was still standing - nothing was broken - all was well with the world.  Then I turned on the TV.  All the local stations had interrupted programming, and a reoccurring theme began to emerge.  Many of the people interviewed compared their immediate reaction of the earthquake to the feeling they had on that September day in 2001.  The fears of that day 10 years ago reemerged for many.  And I was reminded of something important.

The things that happen to us matter.  Some things we may never forget - like where we were on 9/11.  For other times, the details are forgotten, but the general experience remains with us.  Today I looked at pictures of new student orientation at my colleges, and all of those feelings of fear and joy and excitement came rushing back, locked away long ago but ready to be unleashed by a sight or a sound or a smell.   Generations before us had the death of President Kennedy and Pearl Harbor/D-Day to remember.  For people born in the last 50 years, 9/11 will probably (hopefully) be the most defining national moment we experience.

These corporate moments are lasting for many reasons.  They are a common shared experience. They give us a starting place for conversation and relationship.  And they most likely change the way we think about the world and our place in it.  The events of September 11, 2001 also made us think about faith and religion in a new way.  For some, religion became a haven.  For others, it challenged their understanding of God and a world where these kind of things can happen.  For still others, their faith helped them to stay grounded and loved and to get through difficult and challenging times.

Yesterday's earthquake reminded me that those memories still live within us and have the power to invade whatever else is happening in our world and jar it just a little.  People here in the DC area were reminded of that day 10 years and the insecurities that are always with us in the nation's capital.  It's been 10 years - something in us want to think that someday it will not longer effect us with such impact, but I don't think that's the case.  I think these monumental communal events still effect us just as much as the personal events like weddings and births and deaths.  And as painful as those reminders are, they are also evidence that we are human and not in always in control of what happens around us.

What we can control is how we react.  For me, that reaction is anchored in my trust in a God who does not will trouble for us, but helps us to come through on the other side stronger than when we began.  Dean Sam Lloyd at the National Cathedral said it this way:  Jesus hung out with a motley crew.  They weren't pillars of the community - they sometimes made bad choices.  But Jesus lived out a kind of love that told them that no one could ever do anything to be outside the reach of God's love.  Jesus came to make our lives today possible - lives of love and peace and forgiveness.  And if we choose to follow him, he will give us the strength, energy and compassion to live our lives with all the fullness we can experience.

Paul wrote about this God-love in a letter to the church in Rome, where Christians were undergoing terrible persecution.  I remember these words everyday, in the midst of my remembrances of communal tragedies and personal struggles.  May they give you as much peace as they do me.

Romans 8: 35-39  "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written:  “For your sake we face death all day long;  we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Now excuse me while I go to stock my hurricane box.  Irene is on the way.

Peace, Deb