Hope springs eternal

At least once every two years, the sky turns grey, then orange, then brown. A hot haze creeps across the ground like a weed let loose. Warm flaky grey snow falls on us as we exit our businesses and sniff the dark air.

It's always very hot on those days. The air is thick with carbon; our lungs, unaccustomed to it even after several years, rebel against the influx. Sounds fill the atmosphere: fire engines rushing toward the catastrophe, helicopter rotors slicing viciously across the sky, angry drivers cursing each other, each as helpless as the next in the situation.

Fires are part of our culture in Southern California. We're not surprised by their arrival nor are we deterred from continuing our lives. But every time it happens, we get just that little bit concerned. We discuss our escape routes. We plan what to take and what to leave, in case we need to flee the indiscriminate flames.

Rich and poor they displace, violent and ruthless in their fury. The feed on life, on memories, on structure. They consume and destroy; with each piece of fuel the fire grows, but doesn't realize that it's killing itself. The more it destroys, the less there is to destroy. Utter annihilation is left in its path, and it can't retreat across its wasted battlefield.

But when the fires have died out, when the flames become cannibals and vanish, the charred, smoking refuse of their slaughter remains.

Somewhere amidst the destruction, green erupts from the blackened earth. It births a tiny white and yellow sun that begins to sing. The lifesong shakes the earth, sends ripples across the ground, and jolts the great mother back into her life-giving cycle, spilling forth her very being into the grasses, the flowers, the trees that despite the heat have come through and will rise again.

They all join in the song until the sound is deafening. It rocks our hearts and stirs our souls, melts the stars in the sky, pointing us to the Creator.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.