The last to see the blaze

Last night, Angel Island was on fire. Fierce winds whipped a brush fire through the little island and the entire hilltop was ablaze. And I didn't see it. Firefighters put their lives on the line and rushed the heat and wind and faced the flames while I sat in my comfortable little living room and wrote the following blogpost:

I'm sitting here looking out my french doors, watching a beautiful sun set below the horizon. Out beyond the houses down the hill, beyond the dark blue waters being bathed in red-orange colors, and way beyond the marina is the Golden Gate bridge. For the past few hours, while working away on the computer, I've marveled at the colors that are now slowly, slowly fading. Blues, greens, red, orange, yellow, salmon. Now it's almost gone and everything, so soon, will eclipse to navy then black. That ridiculously bright moon will soon show itself hanging above the two trees towering in my backyard.

Watching that silvery moon hang outside my window, I remember how earlier today while sitting in a meeting, I was invited to join in a group prayer. All our voices, in jumbled syncopation, recited the Lord's Prayer... "Our Father who art in heaven..."

I'm not sure how this evening's moon figures into this whole evening of work and contemplation about the state of our little Chinatown church, but I'm reminded of what Bishop Spong wrote in Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Why do we pray as if we pray to an unworldly God? Does God look down at us from "on high" like that great moon, watching over us but separated and disconnected?

Here's the thing: in these distressing times of financial crisis, global poverty, world hunger, natural disasters, etc. What I want, what we need, is God in our midst. Sometimes, what we have is God within, often inseparable, often subsumed, buried. I think that if I climb onto that brick wall at the end of my yard and look out over rooftops of the buildings, I just might see the moon's reflection twinkling in the water. But, in reality, I don't. In fact, the silver disk is nowhere to be seen, and all I see are yellow lights fom windows and doorways -- hundreds of them.

Alright, I'll say it another way: What I want, what we need, is God in our midst. God embodied, Christ's love experienced, and Christian witness lived out.

So I try to pay a bit more attention to the language that I use. Bishop Spong calls us to think about how living in the postmodern world forces us to articulate our prayer life in different ways. We need to envision a new image of God -- and not so much as a deity hanging loosely above us, deigning to look down once in a while because of our fervent accolades of "almighty" "most loving," "most gracious," etc...

"Did you see it," a coworker asked me. I feel as if the whole Bay Area saw the signs and all I could see were the little reflections on the periphery. Almost like Moses, only I didn't see the burning bush. I won't compare the Angel Island fire with the burning bush experience, but I can't help but think of the irony. While I sat in my cozy little apartment admiring my beautiful view of the bay and the gorgeous skyline, a fire -- a real fire -- was blazing right down the hill, on an island, above the waterline. I sat in my pretty house atop the hill in front of the laptop sipping tea, thinking about God's place in our lives and out there, people risked their lives to protect a part of our history.

Here, now, it's not too far fetched for me to think about being in the world and living out our vocation and Christian stewardship. Too easily, I find myself demanding that something -- everything -- have relevance to my life. How does this or that affect my spiritual formation? How does this or that help nurture my faith and help me get closer to God? This internal searching can be good -- transformative. These are worthwhile and necessary questions to ask, but I'm not sure that the focus is in the right place: Me, my, mine. I looked up at the beautiful night sky created by that terrible fire, and wondered where is God in my life.

A few weeks ago, our little church held a luncheon to raise $6,000 to grow an orange grove for a wonderful ministry in Uganda. To date, we've raised about $4,700. Our little fake tree is starting to sprout more and more plastic oranges representing the number of trees our efforts will allow to be purchased, planted and nurtured. Our intentions are in the right place. But what are we looking at, really. I wonder if we're admiring the trees, envisioning them glowing green and orange, plush and lusciously sweet in the hot Ugandan air. Or, do we actually see "the fire" that is blazing in front of our very faces -- the orphans suffering from AIDs, the women who have been stripped of their rights over their bodies, their children, their land, or the many starving children who do not have anywhere to live.

Here's another way of looking at it. I could also think that the fires in Asia or in Africa or in LatinAmerica do not reach me here -- they have no relevance in my life. Or do they? Aren't we all a part of this global community? Don't we all see a bit of God's image in each and every person? And if so, how can we let those fires threaten to consume and subsume the holy vision of God embodied within each human soul?

Living in the Bay Area, I tend to ask questions about practical theology -- theology lived out in a way that is concrete, and yields tangible, quantifiable results. I enjoy being the one raising the difficult questions and pushing the boundaries. And here I stand, on the edge of a hill overlooking a little island called Angel, and here I am, only one of thousands of citizens awed by the beauty of the skyline, but perhaps one of the last to see the flames.