A half hour before I was going to walk home for lunch, it started to pour. When lunchtime rolled around, I pulled on my trench coat, jammed my hat low over my eyes, and put up my umbrella. The wind came whipping around the corners of the buildings downtown and pulled at my umbrella; swirling around buildings it blew the rain at me now from the north, now from the west, now from the east. My trousers got soaked from the bottom of the trench coat to my shoes.

On the walk back, I put on full rain gear: hat, slicker, rain pants. It was raining and blowing even harder, and rain blew up my sleeves and into my face. I got back in the office and stripped off the rain gear. My shoes were soaked, so all afternoon I walked around the office in sock feet.

By sunset, the rain had stopped, but by then it was too late to take a walk. There are days when I just can’t get outside. I’ve had other jobs where it didn’t matter so much if I got soaking wet. When I worked for the carpenter, we had to be outside in all kinds of weather, and no one cared if we got wet. But ministers aren’t supposed to walk around the church in sock feet.

Working outside in bad weather can be uncomfortable and even draining, but it has advantages over being trapped inside — trapped by the clothes you wear and the conventions you have to follow. Not that I approve of “casual Friday,” where corporations allow their employees to come to work without a tie, or wearing sneakers. But for me as a minister, one barrier to living out ecological theology is this insistence in our society that we stay indoors; and this insistence is enforced in many subtle ways.

Tomorrow is supposed to be pleasant: temperatures unseasonably warm, windy but nice and sunny. My work will keep me stuck indoors most of the daylight hours. I love my job, but ecotheology leaves me vaguely troubled by the insistence that mine is an indoors job.