This story I’m about to tell has appeared in a couple of different places. A piece of it was adapted for the Restless Hearts curriculum I worked on. Originally I wrote it for a group of students getting ready to leave UVA and go out into the world. I also wrote it for me as I was getting ready to make a big transition in my life.
Since the youth have had to reschedule their Sunday for leadership, it gave me a chance to revisit the story for this place and time. Easter is a time of transition. For the disciples it was a transition from the way things were to the way things are in light of Jesus’ rising from the dead. For us, it is a time to think about what it means that Jesus is alive. If that is so, then what changes about our lives?
I also know that change often feels like impending disaster. There are so many things going on in our lives that make the future seem like a threat instead of a promise. So what does it mean that all things are being made over or made new? I invite you to listen to those questions in this story, entitled “Trusting the Hurricane.”
The voice on the television was clear. “What you need is the new Triple Cheddar Monster Thick Burger Deluxe with Bacon.” As the deep, urgent voice spoke the camera lovingly panned a huge, dripping cheeseburger that looked like it was just asking to be caught up in a steroids scandal. “What you need is a visit to Hardee’s.”
Gabriella threw a wadded piece of paper at the screen. “No,” she said, “What I need is some help with these stupid quadratic equations! What Einstein thought these up?”
Vera looked over at her friend. “Wasn’t it Einstein?”
“Very funny, Vera. Very funny.”
Gabby and Vera were sitting in the Cavalier Laundrette in Charlottesville trying to multitask their way to the end of their first year at UVA. While their clothes were spinning in the noisy, hot dryers and the TV blared overhead, they were poring over books and notes and trying to pretend to be ready for the next morning’s exam. Even though they could have used the laundry rooms at the dorms, they felt more like the strong, independent women they were when they got to get off grounds. So they lugged their clothes and books over to the Laundromat.
“What I need is a break,” said Vera. “I think if I spend one more minute trying to understand Shakespeare I’m going to lose my capacity for coherent thought.” She looked down at her notes scribbled on a hundred little pieces of paper and index cards. “This is out of control, Gabby.”
Gabby looked down at her own collection of numbers and formulas. “Tell me about it. But hey, looks like load number 76 is done.” She jumped up and walked over to a dryer that was just spinning to a halt.
Just then the door of the Laundromat flew open and a young man ran in, out of breath and with a wild look in his eye. He scanned the room quickly and when he saw Vera he ran to her and plopped down in the seat right beside her. “So, Vera, are you ready for a break?”
Vera smiled. It was Grayson. They had met during the first month of school when Grayson was playing Frisbee golf on the Lawn and nailed her in the head while trying to make a par two off of Homer’s rear end. (Homer is a statue in the middle of the Lawn.) Since then he had been her muse and prophet with his free spirited ways and disarming questions. Grayson had a way of appearing just when Vera needed him to. In a year when so many things had changed for Vera, when she had been challenged in so many different ways, Grayson was her touchstone for understanding what was real. He was also becoming her boyfriend, though neither one of them had yet said that aloud or broached the DTR conversation (“Defining the Relationship”).
“How did you know, Grayson? I just told Gabby that I needed a break.”
“Excellent! Do you remember how I tried to get you to bungee jump off the Rotunda last month?”
Vera was nervous. “Grayson…”
“Chill out, Vera. I still haven’t found the right bungee cords for that. But I did find somebody who can get us on to the upper balconies around the Lawn. Are you interested?”
“Absolutely.”
“Cool. Well, meet me in front of Pavilion VIII at midnight.”
“Grayson?”
“Yes?”
“Will I be facing an honor trial after this?”
“No way, Vera. Trespassing charges at the most. Oh, and by the way, I need to collect for the plane tickets soon.”
“Right. Grayson…I don’t know about that. Is it too late to get your money back because my folks are really freaking out about this beach week trip.”
“Vera! You have got to go! You’re headed back to that strange little place you call home for 13 weeks. You’re going to work at an Eckerd’s and become a slave of the establishment. You’ve got to take this week before you go. Gabby’s going. Ike’s going. Beebo and Nimrod.”
“Yeah, Grayson…no, see I want to go. I think it will be great. But remind me again why we’re going to Nicaragua?”
“Vera, everybody’s going to Nicaragua these days.”
“No, they’re not, Grayson. They’re going to the Outer Banks.”
“Yeah, sure. NOW they’re going to the Outer Banks, but after they hear about our week at Puerto Cabeza de Cabra, it will be da bomb.”
“Grayson, you are not going to get 21st century people to go to this place if you keep saying da bomb. Nobody says that anymore.”
“Right, so you’re going?”
“Yes, I’m going. I’ll bring you the check at midnight. Pavilion VIII. I’ll bring some bail money for you, too.”
“Awesome. Thanks, Vera. You’re da bo…you’re great.” And with that Grayson bounced back out of the Laundromat while Vera smiled.
Vera was right about her parents. They did freak out when they learned about Nicaragua. On the plane ride down she wondered again why she had agreed to this crazy trip. She didn’t even know any Spanish! Her 200-level French was not going to help her here.
What she hadn’t anticipated was how everything seemed to change for her after her last exam. The semester had felt like a huge steamroller bearing down her so that she had to keep running every second to avoid being flattened. There wasn’t much room to think about the summer, her parents, the beach trip, or even how she was feeling. But as she turned in her last blue book and walked out of New Cabell Hall, a strange mixture of relief and apprehension settled in.
She was definitely feeling better with the steamroller fading into the distance behind her. Whatever grade she got on that Russian History exam, it wasn’t going to be bad enough to sink her semester. But in the pit of her stomach she also felt a sense of foreboding and instability that she hadn’t had since her first days at UVA when she was wondering if she had made the right choice in coming to school here at all. Back then her mom was having health issues and her old friends were back in Mattaponi, seemingly doing fine without her. But as she had learned to embrace the roller-coaster ride of college life, that feeling had passed. Now that she was going back to Mattaponi, it was coming back.
Gabby, who was sitting next to her on the plane, noticed that Vera was a little preoccupied. “Hey, Lady, what’s up?”
“Gabby, do you know what you’re going to do when you grow up?”
“Hey, what’s to say I’m not grown up already?”
“O.K., yeah, but I mean, what next? After UVA.”
“No clue, Vera. But you’re not supposed to answer my question with a question. Lets’ try again. Hey, Lady, what’s up? (Here’s the part where you say, ‘Thanks for asking, Gabby. I’m looking worried and unsettled because…’)”
Vera smiled. “Because…because, Gabby, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I mean in Mattaponi I never thought about it. I never had much of a goal besides going to college. When classes are going it’s easy--I’m a student. But here I am going to another country and I’m going to hand over my passport and they’re going to say, ‘Welcome, Vera Allen,’ and I don’t know who that is!”
“So, it’s about going to another country…”
“No, Gabby it has nothing to do with another country. I don’t know who Vera Allen is in the United States! I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m headed. I don’t know who or what to trust. I don’t know who God wants me to be. And it feels like freedom, but it also feels like really scary.”
“Vera,” Gabby said. “Before you take on life, the universe and everything, just try enjoying one day on the beach. Can you promise me that?”
But even that didn’t work out. They landed without incident in a small, one runway airport at the edge of a vast jungle. The customs official hardly glanced at Vera’s passport as she walked through. It was a little disconcerting to see how easy it was to get it, but a little bit thrilling, too.
The group boarded a taxi to head to the hotel where they were staying. Well, I say taxi, but it was really more like the bed of a pick-up truck. In fact, it was the bed of a pick-up truck with rough wooden benches fixed over each wheel base. Only the word ‘Taxi’ written across the pick-up gate gave away what it was. Ten of them squeezed together with their stuff for the short ride.
Nicaragua is a desperately poor country and Puerto Cabeza de Cabra (in English: Port Goathead) showed the effects of the poverty. Their hotel was a collection of cinderblock cabanas with one wall of each consisting of a bamboo screen facing the Pacific that could be pulled back. A larger cinderblock building with a timber roof behind these cabanas served as the office, restaurant, and local health clinic. It was the most substantial building in a very small city. A friendly, elderly couple had showed them their rooms and then left them there.
Grayson looked at the modest digs and immediately pronounced them “Awesome!”, but no one else was ready to make that claim. The students threw their bags down and headed straight for the beach. It was warm and wonderful--very different from the oddly cold spring they had left behind in Virginia. A stiff wind was blowing off of the ocean and the setting sun was soon obscured by a raft of dark, billowy clouds on the horizon. Before dark the atmosphere was as unsettled as Vera felt.
When Vera called home a little while later to let her parents know that they had made it safely, they had some more unsettling news. They had been watching the Weather Channel and they talked about a hurricane headed straight for Central America. “Dad, are you sure? It’s too early for a hurricane, isn’t it? It’s only May.”
“It’s very unusual, but I’m sitting here looking at it on the screen right now, Vera.”
By noon the next day things had turned even more ominous. Though the local weather reports said that the main storm would hit north of them, the hurricane was large enough that it was going to cause some major problems in Puerto Cabeza de Cabra. Rain began to fall in the early afternoon and the winds became fierce. The hotel evacuated all of the guests to the main building where there were few windows. Around sunset the electricity went out. When Vera peeked out at the ocean it was seething and tossing huge waves at the cabanas they had left. Somehow the thought of it encroaching on them in the dark was even worse.
She leaned up against a wall as one of the hotel owners handed her an oil lamp. In its flickering light she could see Grayson walking toward her. He put his back up against the wall beside her and slid down into a sitting position, just as he had done dozens of times before when she was studying in the hallway at Bonnycastle dorm.
“So…want to play some cards?”
“No, Grayson. Thanks, but I just don’t think I could concentrate.”
“So, I guess bungee jumping off the roof of…”
“Don’t even try it, Grayson. It’s lame.”
Grayson looked away for a minute, pretending to be interested in a joke Ike was telling Beebo across the room. When he turned back to Vera he said, “You know, hurricanes are great.”
“Grayson…”
“No, really. It’s true. I took this Environmental Science course last semester and we talked about how they are one of the most efficient forms of heat transfer from the tropics to other areas.”
Vera looked mildly interested so Grayson kept going. “You see, the tropics get way more solar energy than they need and all that excess energy gets stored in the ocean water. Currents take some of it away, but hurricanes are like the bullet trains of heat transfer. They just take all that energy and chug straight on up to the northern hemisphere. It’s da bomb…I mean, it’s pretty nifty.”
“O.K., Grayson, I don’t know if this is true or not. I don’t think you even took an Environmental Science class last fall. But hurricanes are not ‘pretty nifty.’ They’re big and scary and they knock lots of stuff down while they’re transferring heat so efficiently. So if that’s supposed to make me feel better, it’s not working. I still hear the wind. I’m sitting in here in the dark wondering if the roof is going to blow off, and I think the whole world is coming apart around me. I need something more substantial than a stupid lecture to make me feel better.”
“What do you need, Vera?”
“I need to get out of here. I need to go home. I need to pray. I don’t know. What do you need?”
“Vera,” Grayson said, “Look at me.”
Vera turned her head to look into Grayson’s green eyes. He held her face in his hands as he had done once before in the time she had known him. The lamp cast strange shadows around his face, but he seemed remarkably calm. “Vera,” he said, “I don’t have a way to get you out or to take you home or to tell you that everything is going to be alright. I don’t know why we’re here. But I do have this to give you. You are God’s child. You need to trust the hurricane, and you need to dance.”
Dance? Dance? How ridiculous the words sounded in the middle of a hurricane! The world was blowing away around them. Vera’s life was an absolute uncertainty. She didn’t even know why she was in this odd little corner of the world. But strangely, Grayson’s words were enough. The character of the wind changed. It was no longer fierce and menacing, but mighty and musical. The huddled forms of people gathered around faltering lamps didn’t seem like helpless, small lights in the dark; they were people finding strength in each other. Even the darkness did not seem dark but somehow comforting. And within herself, Vera felt the deep, dark questions that absorbed her on the plane, melting into insignificance. Dancing. Yes, that’s just what should be done.
But before she was able to consider what this meant, there was a ferocious gust and the building shook and the simple timber roof shuddered and then lifted up into the air, floating away into the night sky like Dorothy‘s house in the Wizard of Oz. Suddenly rain poured in on them and the winds howled overhead. It was terrifying and yet amazing. Most of the oil lamps blew out immediately.
Then an old woman staggered to the center of the room and looked up at the raging heavens above her. She gestured to an old man to join her. Vera recognized them from check-in the day before. It was the owners of the hotel who had now lost everything. Or so it seemed. The old woman and the old man looked at one another and as if they had been practicing for this moment for some time. They began to raise their hands into the air and then to stomp their feet and then to shout in a loud voice and then…o my…and then to dance.
Vera looked over at Grayson, who was sitting, shocked, against the wall. She said to him, “Grayson, look at me.” He looked. “Grayson, it’s time to dance.”
They joined the couple in the middle of the room in a dance that was at the same time primitive and glorious. As they danced the winds began to die down. The rains came to an end. The clouds parted to reveal a sky full of diamonds and a crescent moon. The rebuilding had already begun, and for Vera it was as if she had taken her first step. There were many things yet to do, many questions yet to answer. But she no longer needed a passport to tell her who she was. She was a child of God.
I don’t know if a hurricane is the best metaphor for a time of transition, especially for people like us who know what hurricanes do to coastal places, but I know it feels that way sometimes. When we move into a new stage of life, nothing seems stable. Nothing seems sure. Will I have what I need? Will I have people around me to assure me that I’m loved? Will I feel God’s presence in this new time? Will I know who I am?
But we have old stories to tell us what it should be like. In the early Church, shortly after Jesus’ resurrection and the huge transition and tumult that the disciples went through…Soon after the hurricane that was Pentecost, Peter and John confronted a man who had not been able to walk since birth. He lived an entirely passive life, being carried to the Temple each day to receive gifts from passers-by. When Peter and John see him, that’s how he is--sitting and asking for alms.
Peter is not content to toss him a coin. He doesn’t even have a coin to toss. He tells the man, “Look at us.” And the man does, expecting to get something from them. But Peter says, “I don’t have what you think you need or what you’ve come to expect. But I do have this: In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”
This man is not content to walk, though. He has not moved on his own since birth, so his first move away from passivity, his first act, is to praise God and to dance. The Bible says he jumped up and went walking and leaping and praising God. He began to dance.
I don’t know what transition you are going through in your life, but I do know that God is not through with you yet. There are things for us to do and we should never accept complacency when God gives us choreography. I don’t have much to give to you today, but I do have this: You are a child of God. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, don’t just walk; dance with me. Thanks be to God.
Since the youth have had to reschedule their Sunday for leadership, it gave me a chance to revisit the story for this place and time. Easter is a time of transition. For the disciples it was a transition from the way things were to the way things are in light of Jesus’ rising from the dead. For us, it is a time to think about what it means that Jesus is alive. If that is so, then what changes about our lives?
I also know that change often feels like impending disaster. There are so many things going on in our lives that make the future seem like a threat instead of a promise. So what does it mean that all things are being made over or made new? I invite you to listen to those questions in this story, entitled “Trusting the Hurricane.”
The voice on the television was clear. “What you need is the new Triple Cheddar Monster Thick Burger Deluxe with Bacon.” As the deep, urgent voice spoke the camera lovingly panned a huge, dripping cheeseburger that looked like it was just asking to be caught up in a steroids scandal. “What you need is a visit to Hardee’s.”
Gabriella threw a wadded piece of paper at the screen. “No,” she said, “What I need is some help with these stupid quadratic equations! What Einstein thought these up?”
Vera looked over at her friend. “Wasn’t it Einstein?”
“Very funny, Vera. Very funny.”
Gabby and Vera were sitting in the Cavalier Laundrette in Charlottesville trying to multitask their way to the end of their first year at UVA. While their clothes were spinning in the noisy, hot dryers and the TV blared overhead, they were poring over books and notes and trying to pretend to be ready for the next morning’s exam. Even though they could have used the laundry rooms at the dorms, they felt more like the strong, independent women they were when they got to get off grounds. So they lugged their clothes and books over to the Laundromat.
“What I need is a break,” said Vera. “I think if I spend one more minute trying to understand Shakespeare I’m going to lose my capacity for coherent thought.” She looked down at her notes scribbled on a hundred little pieces of paper and index cards. “This is out of control, Gabby.”
Gabby looked down at her own collection of numbers and formulas. “Tell me about it. But hey, looks like load number 76 is done.” She jumped up and walked over to a dryer that was just spinning to a halt.
Just then the door of the Laundromat flew open and a young man ran in, out of breath and with a wild look in his eye. He scanned the room quickly and when he saw Vera he ran to her and plopped down in the seat right beside her. “So, Vera, are you ready for a break?”
Vera smiled. It was Grayson. They had met during the first month of school when Grayson was playing Frisbee golf on the Lawn and nailed her in the head while trying to make a par two off of Homer’s rear end. (Homer is a statue in the middle of the Lawn.) Since then he had been her muse and prophet with his free spirited ways and disarming questions. Grayson had a way of appearing just when Vera needed him to. In a year when so many things had changed for Vera, when she had been challenged in so many different ways, Grayson was her touchstone for understanding what was real. He was also becoming her boyfriend, though neither one of them had yet said that aloud or broached the DTR conversation (“Defining the Relationship”).
“How did you know, Grayson? I just told Gabby that I needed a break.”
“Excellent! Do you remember how I tried to get you to bungee jump off the Rotunda last month?”
Vera was nervous. “Grayson…”
“Chill out, Vera. I still haven’t found the right bungee cords for that. But I did find somebody who can get us on to the upper balconies around the Lawn. Are you interested?”
“Absolutely.”
“Cool. Well, meet me in front of Pavilion VIII at midnight.”
“Grayson?”
“Yes?”
“Will I be facing an honor trial after this?”
“No way, Vera. Trespassing charges at the most. Oh, and by the way, I need to collect for the plane tickets soon.”
“Right. Grayson…I don’t know about that. Is it too late to get your money back because my folks are really freaking out about this beach week trip.”
“Vera! You have got to go! You’re headed back to that strange little place you call home for 13 weeks. You’re going to work at an Eckerd’s and become a slave of the establishment. You’ve got to take this week before you go. Gabby’s going. Ike’s going. Beebo and Nimrod.”
“Yeah, Grayson…no, see I want to go. I think it will be great. But remind me again why we’re going to Nicaragua?”
“Vera, everybody’s going to Nicaragua these days.”
“No, they’re not, Grayson. They’re going to the Outer Banks.”
“Yeah, sure. NOW they’re going to the Outer Banks, but after they hear about our week at Puerto Cabeza de Cabra, it will be da bomb.”
“Grayson, you are not going to get 21st century people to go to this place if you keep saying da bomb. Nobody says that anymore.”
“Right, so you’re going?”
“Yes, I’m going. I’ll bring you the check at midnight. Pavilion VIII. I’ll bring some bail money for you, too.”
“Awesome. Thanks, Vera. You’re da bo…you’re great.” And with that Grayson bounced back out of the Laundromat while Vera smiled.
Vera was right about her parents. They did freak out when they learned about Nicaragua. On the plane ride down she wondered again why she had agreed to this crazy trip. She didn’t even know any Spanish! Her 200-level French was not going to help her here.
What she hadn’t anticipated was how everything seemed to change for her after her last exam. The semester had felt like a huge steamroller bearing down her so that she had to keep running every second to avoid being flattened. There wasn’t much room to think about the summer, her parents, the beach trip, or even how she was feeling. But as she turned in her last blue book and walked out of New Cabell Hall, a strange mixture of relief and apprehension settled in.
She was definitely feeling better with the steamroller fading into the distance behind her. Whatever grade she got on that Russian History exam, it wasn’t going to be bad enough to sink her semester. But in the pit of her stomach she also felt a sense of foreboding and instability that she hadn’t had since her first days at UVA when she was wondering if she had made the right choice in coming to school here at all. Back then her mom was having health issues and her old friends were back in Mattaponi, seemingly doing fine without her. But as she had learned to embrace the roller-coaster ride of college life, that feeling had passed. Now that she was going back to Mattaponi, it was coming back.
Gabby, who was sitting next to her on the plane, noticed that Vera was a little preoccupied. “Hey, Lady, what’s up?”
“Gabby, do you know what you’re going to do when you grow up?”
“Hey, what’s to say I’m not grown up already?”
“O.K., yeah, but I mean, what next? After UVA.”
“No clue, Vera. But you’re not supposed to answer my question with a question. Lets’ try again. Hey, Lady, what’s up? (Here’s the part where you say, ‘Thanks for asking, Gabby. I’m looking worried and unsettled because…’)”
Vera smiled. “Because…because, Gabby, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I mean in Mattaponi I never thought about it. I never had much of a goal besides going to college. When classes are going it’s easy--I’m a student. But here I am going to another country and I’m going to hand over my passport and they’re going to say, ‘Welcome, Vera Allen,’ and I don’t know who that is!”
“So, it’s about going to another country…”
“No, Gabby it has nothing to do with another country. I don’t know who Vera Allen is in the United States! I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m headed. I don’t know who or what to trust. I don’t know who God wants me to be. And it feels like freedom, but it also feels like really scary.”
“Vera,” Gabby said. “Before you take on life, the universe and everything, just try enjoying one day on the beach. Can you promise me that?”
But even that didn’t work out. They landed without incident in a small, one runway airport at the edge of a vast jungle. The customs official hardly glanced at Vera’s passport as she walked through. It was a little disconcerting to see how easy it was to get it, but a little bit thrilling, too.
The group boarded a taxi to head to the hotel where they were staying. Well, I say taxi, but it was really more like the bed of a pick-up truck. In fact, it was the bed of a pick-up truck with rough wooden benches fixed over each wheel base. Only the word ‘Taxi’ written across the pick-up gate gave away what it was. Ten of them squeezed together with their stuff for the short ride.
Nicaragua is a desperately poor country and Puerto Cabeza de Cabra (in English: Port Goathead) showed the effects of the poverty. Their hotel was a collection of cinderblock cabanas with one wall of each consisting of a bamboo screen facing the Pacific that could be pulled back. A larger cinderblock building with a timber roof behind these cabanas served as the office, restaurant, and local health clinic. It was the most substantial building in a very small city. A friendly, elderly couple had showed them their rooms and then left them there.
Grayson looked at the modest digs and immediately pronounced them “Awesome!”, but no one else was ready to make that claim. The students threw their bags down and headed straight for the beach. It was warm and wonderful--very different from the oddly cold spring they had left behind in Virginia. A stiff wind was blowing off of the ocean and the setting sun was soon obscured by a raft of dark, billowy clouds on the horizon. Before dark the atmosphere was as unsettled as Vera felt.
When Vera called home a little while later to let her parents know that they had made it safely, they had some more unsettling news. They had been watching the Weather Channel and they talked about a hurricane headed straight for Central America. “Dad, are you sure? It’s too early for a hurricane, isn’t it? It’s only May.”
“It’s very unusual, but I’m sitting here looking at it on the screen right now, Vera.”
By noon the next day things had turned even more ominous. Though the local weather reports said that the main storm would hit north of them, the hurricane was large enough that it was going to cause some major problems in Puerto Cabeza de Cabra. Rain began to fall in the early afternoon and the winds became fierce. The hotel evacuated all of the guests to the main building where there were few windows. Around sunset the electricity went out. When Vera peeked out at the ocean it was seething and tossing huge waves at the cabanas they had left. Somehow the thought of it encroaching on them in the dark was even worse.
She leaned up against a wall as one of the hotel owners handed her an oil lamp. In its flickering light she could see Grayson walking toward her. He put his back up against the wall beside her and slid down into a sitting position, just as he had done dozens of times before when she was studying in the hallway at Bonnycastle dorm.
“So…want to play some cards?”
“No, Grayson. Thanks, but I just don’t think I could concentrate.”
“So, I guess bungee jumping off the roof of…”
“Don’t even try it, Grayson. It’s lame.”
Grayson looked away for a minute, pretending to be interested in a joke Ike was telling Beebo across the room. When he turned back to Vera he said, “You know, hurricanes are great.”
“Grayson…”
“No, really. It’s true. I took this Environmental Science course last semester and we talked about how they are one of the most efficient forms of heat transfer from the tropics to other areas.”
Vera looked mildly interested so Grayson kept going. “You see, the tropics get way more solar energy than they need and all that excess energy gets stored in the ocean water. Currents take some of it away, but hurricanes are like the bullet trains of heat transfer. They just take all that energy and chug straight on up to the northern hemisphere. It’s da bomb…I mean, it’s pretty nifty.”
“O.K., Grayson, I don’t know if this is true or not. I don’t think you even took an Environmental Science class last fall. But hurricanes are not ‘pretty nifty.’ They’re big and scary and they knock lots of stuff down while they’re transferring heat so efficiently. So if that’s supposed to make me feel better, it’s not working. I still hear the wind. I’m sitting in here in the dark wondering if the roof is going to blow off, and I think the whole world is coming apart around me. I need something more substantial than a stupid lecture to make me feel better.”
“What do you need, Vera?”
“I need to get out of here. I need to go home. I need to pray. I don’t know. What do you need?”
“Vera,” Grayson said, “Look at me.”
Vera turned her head to look into Grayson’s green eyes. He held her face in his hands as he had done once before in the time she had known him. The lamp cast strange shadows around his face, but he seemed remarkably calm. “Vera,” he said, “I don’t have a way to get you out or to take you home or to tell you that everything is going to be alright. I don’t know why we’re here. But I do have this to give you. You are God’s child. You need to trust the hurricane, and you need to dance.”
Dance? Dance? How ridiculous the words sounded in the middle of a hurricane! The world was blowing away around them. Vera’s life was an absolute uncertainty. She didn’t even know why she was in this odd little corner of the world. But strangely, Grayson’s words were enough. The character of the wind changed. It was no longer fierce and menacing, but mighty and musical. The huddled forms of people gathered around faltering lamps didn’t seem like helpless, small lights in the dark; they were people finding strength in each other. Even the darkness did not seem dark but somehow comforting. And within herself, Vera felt the deep, dark questions that absorbed her on the plane, melting into insignificance. Dancing. Yes, that’s just what should be done.
But before she was able to consider what this meant, there was a ferocious gust and the building shook and the simple timber roof shuddered and then lifted up into the air, floating away into the night sky like Dorothy‘s house in the Wizard of Oz. Suddenly rain poured in on them and the winds howled overhead. It was terrifying and yet amazing. Most of the oil lamps blew out immediately.
Then an old woman staggered to the center of the room and looked up at the raging heavens above her. She gestured to an old man to join her. Vera recognized them from check-in the day before. It was the owners of the hotel who had now lost everything. Or so it seemed. The old woman and the old man looked at one another and as if they had been practicing for this moment for some time. They began to raise their hands into the air and then to stomp their feet and then to shout in a loud voice and then…o my…and then to dance.
Vera looked over at Grayson, who was sitting, shocked, against the wall. She said to him, “Grayson, look at me.” He looked. “Grayson, it’s time to dance.”
They joined the couple in the middle of the room in a dance that was at the same time primitive and glorious. As they danced the winds began to die down. The rains came to an end. The clouds parted to reveal a sky full of diamonds and a crescent moon. The rebuilding had already begun, and for Vera it was as if she had taken her first step. There were many things yet to do, many questions yet to answer. But she no longer needed a passport to tell her who she was. She was a child of God.
I don’t know if a hurricane is the best metaphor for a time of transition, especially for people like us who know what hurricanes do to coastal places, but I know it feels that way sometimes. When we move into a new stage of life, nothing seems stable. Nothing seems sure. Will I have what I need? Will I have people around me to assure me that I’m loved? Will I feel God’s presence in this new time? Will I know who I am?
But we have old stories to tell us what it should be like. In the early Church, shortly after Jesus’ resurrection and the huge transition and tumult that the disciples went through…Soon after the hurricane that was Pentecost, Peter and John confronted a man who had not been able to walk since birth. He lived an entirely passive life, being carried to the Temple each day to receive gifts from passers-by. When Peter and John see him, that’s how he is--sitting and asking for alms.
Peter is not content to toss him a coin. He doesn’t even have a coin to toss. He tells the man, “Look at us.” And the man does, expecting to get something from them. But Peter says, “I don’t have what you think you need or what you’ve come to expect. But I do have this: In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”
This man is not content to walk, though. He has not moved on his own since birth, so his first move away from passivity, his first act, is to praise God and to dance. The Bible says he jumped up and went walking and leaping and praising God. He began to dance.
I don’t know what transition you are going through in your life, but I do know that God is not through with you yet. There are things for us to do and we should never accept complacency when God gives us choreography. I don’t have much to give to you today, but I do have this: You are a child of God. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, don’t just walk; dance with me. Thanks be to God.
Acts 3:1-10 [NRSV]
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o'clock in the afternoon. And a man lame from birth was being carried in. People would lay him daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask for alms from those entering the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them for alms.
Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, "Look at us." And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, "I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk." And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.
Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. All the people saw him walking and praising God, and they recognized him as the one who used to sit and ask for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
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