It's cold, even in Texas!

I know we are not inundated by snow and ice, but the difference in temperatures from the norm is about 50 degrees colder than a few days ago. Low temperatures for the next few days will be in the 20s F., which is very unusual for south Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course, there are over-reactions. Public schools are closed for the next two days. A friend told me that her husband's medical office has received appointment and surgery cancellations due to the impending weather. Snow is predicted for Thursday-Friday, but it is unlikely in my opinion, though the local meteorologists are enthusiastically predicting the worst.

The only significant snowfall in recent history in Corpus Christi was the amazing 4-6 inch snow of Christmas Eve 2004. We never expected any to be left when we woke up on Christmas Day, but the snow was still there. They say that Christmas Eve was the first night ever to have NO crimes reported! (Everyone was out playing in the snow.)

There are rolling blackouts throughout the state of TX so that the state power grid will continue to operate. We did not lose electrical power today at our house, but about a mile away, neighborhoods were without power for a couple of hours. Traffic lights were off at some major intersections, too.

I am happy because a new book was delivered from Amazon this evening: The Essential Tillich edited by F. Forrester Church. I was so excited by this week's chapter on Paul Tillich in the fourth year of EFM that I had to find out more about his theology.

I have only read a little bit, but already love what Paul Tillich wrote in 1958 for the Saturday Evening Post:

"The first step toward the nonreligion of the Western world was made by religion itself. When it defended its great symbols, not as symbols, but as literal stories, it had already lost the battle. In doing so the theologians (and today many religious laymen) helped to transfer the powerful expressions of the dimension of depth into objects or happenings on the horizontal plane. There the symbols lost their power and meaning and became an easy prey to physical, biological and historical attack.

"If the symbol of creation which points to the divine ground of everything is transferred to the horizontal plane, it becomes a story of events in a removed past for which there is no evidence, but which contradicts every piece of scientific evidence." (4)

Tillich, Paul. The Esential Tillich. Ed. F. Forrester Church. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987.

This all makes so much sense to me; I will later find out how he concludes this essay!

STAY WARM and SAFE!