I sent you a warning....

Have you heard the joke about the man who is in a flood and he is on the roof of his house and he prays for God to save him?  First a log goes by, then a boat, then a helicopter.  Each time he says no he is waiting for God to save him.  When he finally drowns he angrily confronts God and God says to him:  “What did you want?  I sent you a log, a boat and a helicopter and you turned them all down!

I feel in this pandemic situation that God is saying; “Well I have been trying to warn you.”

In 2011 I sent a draught so severe to the Southwest that the Churches prayed for rain as the cattle died.

I sent you innumerable hurricane’s: Sandy, Katrina, Harvey, and Dorian...over 410 billion in damage. I sent Mathew to destroy Haiti and Maria to destroy Puerto Rico…and all you did was turn your gaze away.

I sent you record flooding last year devastating your breadbasket

Last year I sent 6,782 separate fires to California alone burning over 2 Trillion dollars worth of homes.

And when that did not get your attention, I burned a whole continent of Australia, over 100 billions worth.

But still you said:  “Too bad for those people”.

  

So now I have sent you Corona – a problem so global that no one can ignore it, so deadly that no one can minimize it.  I have brought you to a halt, I have joined you at the hip….and now do I have your attention?

I, Lynn, need to be clear, I do not believe in an Old Testament God who is vengeful and all powerful and goes around smiting people.  I believe in a Mother Earth, a Universe that is intelligent and an eco-system of which humans are but one player in an intricately and yes divinely woven interdependent and quite perfect system.  But due to a reductionist error in both how our brains process and in how the great theologies of the world have worked, we have seen ourselves as separate from and above or in charge of nature, and it has lead to catastrophically bad choices.

For that reason I want to learn the lessons Corona is trying to teach us.

The first one, just incredible gratitude for all that I am so privileged to have: my health, still a job, food to eat, and a roof over my head that I own that will be mine even after other hard times go by.

I want to learn to slow down and be still and hear what the earth is telling us, that it is sick, very, very sick and needing our help.  Global emissions are already down 5%

I want to notice the way it tells us all our fates are linked as one.

I want to notice God’s cry to care for the least of these among us in this time of suffering.

I want to take up the demand for a jubilee year – for the forgiveness of all debt, to let us start from square zero to rebuild, not for some amongst us to start from square negative 10.

I want out of the destruction before us to rise up like the phoenix to build a new society, one based upon justice and humanity out of the rubble of the disaster we have wrought with policies that have made it worse.