Fearless Faith

It is hard to believe that just a few short decades ago (depending on one’s age) weather spotting was a questionable art filled with myths and wives’ tales. I suspect that many of those tales were conveniently placed at the feet of women by men, but that is for future discussions. The only definitive way of forecasting weather was to view it directly, not much help when a storm was already bearing down on you. Contrast that with todays advanced weather technology that not only apprises us of forecasts, but saves lives through advance warnings and accessible real time data.

In decades past, it was not uncommon to spot a weather rock, a tongue-in-cheek treatment of the vagaries of inaccurate low-tech forecasting, and frequently discoverable at tourist stops while traveling. Imagine a cast iron bean pot suspended by a tripod of fence posts and you get the idea. Instead of a bean pot, a ‘weather rock’ was suspended in such a way as to hang in the center of the tripod. An interpretive legend was present nearby with such helpful hints as: if it’s wet, it’s raining; if it’s warm and if it’s bright out and casts a shadow, it’s a sunny day; if it’s wet, white and cold, it’s snowy; if it’s under water, it is flooding; if the rock is swinging back and forth, it’s windy (although do not discount earthquakes); if it’s wet and swinging, it might be a hurricane; and if it is simply gone, you might seek out the nearest tornado shelter.

It should be so easy to take the barometer of the churches we maintain! As organizations and individuals, we are prone to the same misreadings that constitute life in the church. It is the passion of what we do and why we do it that catches up with us at times. Our relationship with the Divine, however construed, is what drives us to seek out the whys of our existence and our role in it all. We would like for it to be simple and easily interpreted, but experience has shown otherwise. What would be the challenge in living if we knew all the answers ahead of time?

Some have termed it the thermostat paradox, the belief that there is an optimal one-size-fits-all temperature setting that is best for everyone. It can be the bane of property committees, often leading to locking thermostat covers, the keys to which are jealously guarded. Would a weather rock be helpful in such instances or would it merely cloud the issues?

I suggest a National Weather Service approach. The service has deployed thousands of volunteer observers whose data is combined with other observers to reach truer, more accurate conclusions. No single observer can speak for the others, but in aggregate, they achieve more collectively than singly. It is why community is so critical to our faith understandings; experience imparts knowledge which begets wisdom that stirs us to action.

Like a weather rock, we know that analysis is ongoing and dependent on who interprets the data. We should be open and welcoming in as far as our faith allows. Who knows? We might stand to learn a few things from the simplest conclusions, weather rocks notwithstanding.