Fog

Please ignore Substack prompts to financially support Every Common Thing. I will let you know if I ever decide to take that step. The biggest way you can help me right now is to send links to anyone you know who might be interested in journeying with us as we seek glimpses of God’s presence in everyday life. Thank you.

---

Hi Friends,

It is amazing to me that so much of what we witness in the natural world is mirrored in our interior, daily, lived-out lives: Growth. Change. Struggle. Death. New life. It’s all there, in the world outside us as well as in the world inside us. We can learn a lot by watching both worlds, by linking ourselves with the greater, created order of God. Somehow, it makes me feel less alone, gives my small life significance, grants me a measure of security to realize I have a place, a role to play, in all that I see.

I watched fog engulf a dock a few months ago and have carried that image in my mind since. In a matter of minutes the fog changed everything around me, clouding my vision and sense of surety. I could not stop it, could not change it. I could only wait it out.

It requires a lot of energy to endure prolonged periods of transition; it’s not always easy to get to the other side of whatever it is we are going through. Ultimately, we are changed by the experience. The old saying “nothing stays the same” is as true a maxim as I know. We – our physical, psychological, intellectual, spiritual selves – are always changing, are always transitioning. For better or worse, we don’t stay the same. People around us don’t stay the same. Someone dear to me often says her husband doesn’t like change. Every time she says it, I think, “Who does?!” Transition is hard. Transition is slow. It is confusing. To keep moving ahead when surrounded by uncertainty can be as dangerous as maintaining high speed in a boat crossing open water as fog rolls in.

Fog, which is produced by warm air passing over cooler ground or bodies of water, vanquishes into mist what we heretofore believed was solid and sure and dependable. We can doubt everything when the world becomes blanketed in fog. Even our next step, which only moments before felt certain, can quickly become precarious, unknown.

Ships on high seas rely on radar to avoid collisions during fog. They also slow down if they have any reason to believe other vessels are nearby. Small boaters, those on the Intracoastal Waterway and on lakes and sounds and rivers, slow to a crawl, sound horns and ring bells that toll “I’m here! Be careful! Don’t hit me!” To not take such precautions risks running aground and being injured, possibly being thrown overboard, or colliding with another boat or other unseen object. It risks being killed. Without a point of fixed sight, it is easy for boaters to become eerily lost when only minutes before they knew precisely where they were and what lay ahead. When fog is blanket dense, the best thing a boater can do – assuming they are not in the middle of a highly trafficked channel – is drop anchor, sit tight, keep eyes and ears open, and wait it out. Light will eventually come.

We have now moved three weeks beyond Easter. It was a time of great confusion, anxiety, disbelief and unfiltered fear back when Christ was alive, and then dead, and then alive again. Whether you are a Christian or not, we do the story of Easter and ourselves no good if we don’t look at the historical time of post-Resurrection as anything other than what it was – a time of great transition and uncertainty. Jesus’ small band of followers, scattered after his crucifixion and burial, did not know what to believe or whom to trust, and for good reason.

This is the thing about fog: You can’t generate it and you can’t stop it. All you can do is deal with it for what it is. The female followers of Jesus, obedient, Jewish Sabbath-keepers, had waited as long as they could to undertake the unpleasant task awaiting them: to anoint with burial spices the dead body of the man they had believed to be the long-awaited Messiah, the man they had pinned all their hopes on to change the world. It smacks of authenticity to me that when no one else knew what to do, this small clutch of women said, “We know what we have to do. Take care of His body. We loved Him. We believed in Him.” Despite what must have been an overwhelming fear of what they would find inside the tomb other than stench and decay, the women moved toward the unknown. Their great need to respond to the crisis before them pushed them outside of themselves.

When the women saw that the body of Jesus was not there, not where they had with their own eyes seen him laid a few days before, Mary Magdalene began to weep (John 20). She cried tears of bitterness at what had happened to Jesus’ body – whoever had taken it, wherever it was – and tears of deep remorse that she and her companions could not do the job they had set out with resolve to do. Their determination was not enough; they were powerless to change the situation. She cried tears of fear at what would now happen. Wasn’t it enough that His life and the promise of His life had ended, that once again, nothing would change? Must their load grow heavier?

The (male) disciples, on the other hand, were finely attuned to the danger surrounding them. After being summoned by Mary Magdalene to visit the tomb – and finding it just as empty as she had said it was – they gathered in a house and bolted all the doors, locking themselves in with their fears and questions and disbelief. They had lost the one thing they had grown to believe was sure, the one thing capable of filling their deepest needs. Their fear was palpable, sounding the depths of their souls with each drawn breath, with each exhalation. They had left livelihoods and families and communities to follow Jesus. What were they supposed to do now? There were no clear steps ahead.

Until Jesus came to them. Until He met met Mary in the garden and called her by name. Until He appeared before the disciples inside their locked room and broke their prison of fear. Until His presence was once again tangible, real, life-giving. Like a steadily growing light, Jesus offered His peace to all who saw Him, a singular peace that grew and strengthened, that steeled weak knees and calmed trembling hearts with grit and patience and hope. A peace that marked the way forward.

We all experience fog in our lives, be it the loss of people we have loved or disease or pain or loneliness or thwarted dreams. We all experience times of long waiting, even for good things. We can imagine what it would be like to give up in despair, to believe light will never come, and that even if it does come, it won’t be enough to banish the darkness from our hearts and minds. Deep down, we know our careers, marriages, friendships, children, financial security, health – the trappings of security and control we surround ourselves with – can all be engulfed in fog and lost to us in a matter of minutes. The way forward can suddenly become unclear. Though we may see the fog coming, we cannot escape it.

We are all Mary Magdalene, crying tears of anguish and regret at not being able to do the one thing we thought was of paramount importance, the one right thing we thought would make a difference. Like Mary, we may find ourselves crying so hard we don’t recognize Jesus even as He stands before us. Likewise, we are all the disciples, afraid for our lives, forlorn, dazed, questioning our purpose. The way forward has become hidden. We have locked the doors of what might be, so certain are we of what is not.

Our sorrows and fears and disorientation are real; we need not diminish them. But just as Jesus was already on His way to his followers, He is already on His way to us. He is on His way to where we are. He comes to us as we wait out the fog, calling our name, bearing the Light and Peace of His presence.