Part I: Reading the Signs of the Times (mere weather, edition)

Don’t know if you noticed, but the general population is being dumbed down by the ever more perfected weather-prediction technology. People might stare at a cloud rotation and shrug their shoulders, thinking nothing of it, or perhaps that it’s just “wake-turbulence” of landing or departing aircraft.

Jesus spoke of us being able to read the weather in His condemnation of our hypocrisy in not being able to read the spiritual signs of the times. But now we can’t even look up at the sky and recognize the warning signs of catastrophic weather, such as a cloud rotation about to fall upon us as a tornado.

• Matthew 16:1-4 — The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven. He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away.

If you’re looking for a sign instead of receiving the many signs given, you will never find your sign, your testing of God. Jesus was working all sorts of signs, but the Pharisees (on the right) and Sadducees (on the left) could see none of them. They only sought a way to dismiss the Living Absolute Truth, Jesus.

The map up top was the weirdly drawn “Tornado Warning” map published by Google Maps the other night, an area just a couple of miles from the rectory. Radar automatically took note of a rotation in cloud cover, turning a tornado watch (conditions are calculated to be ripe) to a tornado warning (a tornado has been spotted, so… TAKE COVER! DO IT NOW!). A sign.

Of a sudden, my “smart”-phone yelled out an extended severe alert, which just about sent me through the ceiling. A sign.

Recovering, in seconds, nostalgia was triggered, because I’m old and annoyed by such things. “Can’t I just ignore it and it’ll go away?” That’s called having already been dumbed down so far we’re just nothing.

My first thought was that it would sure be nice NOT to have a phone-karen scolding the entire local population, but rather to have, relatively speaking, a gentle but deadly serious air-raid siren going off even for a tornado as happened in our mid-west town up North in the mid-20th century. Basic technology from back in the day works better in times of strife. Half the people in my poor parish don’t have “smart phones” by which to listen to phone-karens, and the other half have turned off such notifications and/or don’t always carry their phones. After the phone-karen shrieked away, most people in my neighborhood, not hearing this, kept doing late evening yard work or late evening playing in the streets. People are getting jaded with ever present phones.

So, after the phone-karen yelled at me to take cover – NOW! DO IT NOW! – I, instead, grudgingly sauntered outside, yawning, with continuous lightning and thunder everywhere, a gargantuan random raindrop falling just here or there, sending the message of an imminent downpour, or worse. I had just enough time, walking slowly as I do, and not picking up my pace, to take down the flags, meander back inside, and jump in bed, only to be kept awake for a couple of minutes by sudden ocean of water in the form of rain smashing down with hail.

As usual in such conditions, in my experience, the air itself was deadly unmoving. We were on the edge of a possible funnel-drop. If the wind does come like a freight train slamming into your house at full speed, it’s definitely an “oh s#|+” moment. Been there, done that. But I don’t have a tornado shelter or a basement. So, nothing I can do. But the angels are here. So bed is the option. The wind never came.

• Practicalities: I saw some great advice on the internet the other day. When there’s a tornado watch even at night, don’t just take the best shelter you can, but dress for combat, that is, with the clothes you would want to be wearing while walking about in a total war-zone. Do you want to be in your bare feet whilst scrounging about for survival in broken glass and sharp debris, dazed, in the immediate aftermath? No. How about old-style denim jeans? How about boots tied on tight? What about necessary tools already in pockets or strapped on?
  • an already charged up flashlight and charged up phone
  • an IFAK of some kind, including a tourniquet
  • self defense tools (we have lots of always off-the-leash pit-bulls constantly roaming the yards everyone in the neighborhood – not fun whilst you’re just trying to find your kids in the debris)

Is all this exaggerated, too careful? Talk to survivors and ask them what they would do better the next time. Or are you still an “It only happens to the other guy” person?

If you have a bit of water and shelf-food tucked away as well, and it doesn’t totally fly/float away in a catastrophe, it’s not only useful for you (so that you’re not a burden on others), but you can use what you have also to help others. You be the good guy.

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‘Nuff said on just the weather. More on reading the signs of the times coming up, say, on the kind of culture Vatican Council II jump started concerning reading the signs of the times, and then on what Jesus said on the same. And if we get that far, perhaps another comment on Tucho’s document on Apparitions.

Now then, if this blog asks you next week whether you have some practicalities at the ready for the unthinkable, will you still be unthinking of the unthinkable? Or are you already way ahead of me, with you possibly being an EMT or other first responder or Urgent Care or ER worker? What advice do you have, already having seen too much?

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I hope to have other posts in this “signs of the times” series, surely on Vatican II (Gaudium et Spes), on distinctions in Jesus’ advice about signs of the times regarding His second coming and, very diversely, about a particular persecution, and maybe another on Tucho’s Apparitions document…