It’s a sorrow that we consider modern conversation about the weather ‘small talk.’

We live on land under the eternal sky. The weather frames the whole of our everyday experience. Our ancestors lived that way  – and others less insulated from the natural world know it intimately still. 

I wonder if the designation of ‘small’ might be more a reflection of our human hubris, we who are actually only small, wondrous bits within God’s vast creation. 

We find ease in culture’s urbane economic rush to recenter our own selves as the world’s obvious priority.

What might happen if we were to defy the shallow and instead hew more deeply to the experience of the weather? What if we were to allow it as fully into our consciousness in the quiet everyday moments as in the dramatic ones?  

Not only our judgment about its effect on us in any given moment (though “Dang, it’s hot”  is inevitable in some form in Alabama in July), but as a treasured part of being human and an honest transcendent reality. 

What if we were to notice and breathe and give thanks throughout the day? What if we were to study deeply the natural and human-shaped patterns? What if we held fast to reverence and awe and open-ness and the blessing of it all? 

Some ethical and spiritual traditions (religious or not) encourage such a practice, but mostly we are too busy. 

But I wonder who we might be as a people if we were to let wonder change us. 

Amen