Last week, hundreds of thousands of people were without power and electricity for several days across Northern California. It’s currently peak wildfire season, and in an effort to prevent power lines sparking during a windy few days, a major utility company made the difficult decision to cut power in our area. Honestly, it was difficult not to be frustrated during those couple of days — with all the throwing food out of the fridge (and thinking about local businesses who would lose so much money, or families who can’t afford to lose what food they have), stumbling around a dark house with headlamps and candles, showering at a friend’s house who was fortunate enough to have hot water, having to charge my phone in my car, and being without internet access.

You'd have thought that a lack of electricity would have been an encouragement to enjoy being unplugged and unhindered by the distraction of screens for a few days (especially after our recent post on Practices of Resistance!), but I mostly felt oddly disoriented and on edge. Being stuck in darkness for a few days had a disorienting effect on my mind, body, and spirit.

Walter Brueggeman writes about this idea of disorientation in his book Praying the Psalms. He suggests that our faith moves through three phases: “(a) being securely oriented; (b) being painfully disoriented; (c) being surprisingly reoriented” (p. 2). We long for the security of a sense of “equilibrium,” when things feel settled and normal—such as having full access to power, electricity, running water, and internet. While there are some Psalms that reflect this season of secure orientation, but a majority of the Psalms are laments, cries out to God when we experience disorientation.