Wintry Relapses Never Prevent Summer

Double Crossed by Missouri Weather
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Yesterday I decided that summer was nearly here--it was in the 80's the day before--so it was time for one of my beloved Hawaiian shirts. Every Thursday the dress code is casual at Unity Village, and although I usually wear a jacket and tie even on dress down day, I abandoned the professional garb for a luau look.

Except Thursday wasn't summer weather here but a breezy day in the 50's. I shivered all day. A wiser soul might have gone back home and put on a flannel lumberjack shirt, but I thought I could decree warm weather and it would be so. Some of the biblical Jesuses could have done it; John's Jesus is so supernatural He could have warmed the hemisphere with a stray thought. So, why not me?

Except shivering in short sleeves is a poor time to affect climate change by positive thinking, my friends of the Cause-and-Effect school of metaphysics notwithstanding. If I changed the weather, it would have affected everyone, and that just would not be fair. In the original Oh, God movie with George Burns and John Denver, the anthropomorphic God-character demonstrates His power over nature by causing a rainstorm, but only inside John Denver's car. Why should He ruin everybody's day, God asks. Maybe that's why all these countervailing human thoughts have so little effect on moving mountains. I mean, if you had the power to pluck that mountain up and cast it into the sea at will, what happens when your neighbor comes home and wants his mountain back? I mean, can we be tossing mountains to and fro like ping-pong balls and still expect the mail to arrive on time? I'm happy enough to find a well-tossed salad at a church potluck. Mountains need to stay where they are.

And winter. Friend, I have done winter. I grew up in the Northeast, lived five years in Germany, three in Colorado, and three in Alaska. I've been out of doors as a chaplain with the Infantry in the arctic, sleeping on the ground at 65 degrees below zero F. I've zoomed along the Rockies in an open jeep in a snowstorm. I've walked guard duty in Central Europe at sub-zero temperatures. I have done winter.

But Missouri wasn't through chilling for this season. A petty 55 degrees with with a wind? Hardly a polar blast. What was wrong with me--a little tingle at the elbows and I'm whining for Acapulco. And then I realized: It was not getting what I wanted that caused me this discomfort, not the colder weather itself. I wanted winter to be over. Every fall I love to watch the leaves turn colors, enjoy the cooler air and anticipate snowstorms with glee. But I thought that was over now...it's beach umbrellas on the back deck and flip-flops and Bermudas. No, it's not. Not yet. Everything happens in its time. Life has cycles. Sometimes you're the salmon; sometimes you're the bear. Sometimes the path gets blocked and willpower alone will not clear it because that is not the way you need to go and the Universe know it and you don't. Yet.

I don't want any more winter, yet. I'll be ready in November. Now, I want warm, warmer, warmest! And it will come. Wintry relapses in life never prevent summer, only delay it. In the fullness of time, all things work together for the good.

I'll try to remember that next time I'm shivering in a luau shirt.