Dancing in the Eye of the Hurricane

Trinity Sunday sermon at St. James, Alexandria

Late last week, I was listening to American Roots on public radio and heard a song called “The Eye” by Brandi Carlile. The key lyric in that song is, “You can dance in a hurricane, but only if you’re standing in the eye.”

Striking imagery. And my immediate response was, “The title of my memoir—when I get around to writing it—will be ‘Dancing in the Eye of the Hurricane.’”

Maybe 24 hours later I sat down at the computer to look at the propers for today. And that’s when I realized that today is the one day in the church year devoted to a point of theology—perhaps our most important but most challenging point of theology—the Trinity.

Brothers and sisters, I don’t know if that memoir will ever be written. But today’s Trinity Sunday sermon is entitled “Dancing in the Eye of The Hurricane.”

Because that’s how I experience the Triune God and God’s call and claim on my life.

Now, you are not about to hear some clever theological explanation of how the Trinity is like a hurricane. Rather, like every other sermon I have preached, this one comes from my life, from what happened this week, from how I encountered God in the world yesterday, this month, 10 years ago. 

God comes to us disguised as our life, writer Paula D’Arcy said. And that quote is now available as a poster, on a t-shirt, printed on.. whatever.

It resonates. God comes to us disguised as our life.

And life is a lot like a hurricane. Sometimes we dance along happily and competently in the relative calm of the eye. And then we miss a step or the roiling turmoil around us lurches in an unexpected direction, and we are bouncing off the walls. It takes time to get back into that eye where we can dance again, and only in retrospect can we see that God was in it… and we in God... the whole time. 

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