Fr. Rolheiser tells the story of a woman who was happily married and running a very successful business with her husband, who was a recovering alcoholic. The husband unfortunately began to drink, and within two years, they had lost everything, including each other. She moved to a new city and took a new job, but the pain of what she had lost lingered, and she found herself constantly depressed and joyless as she sought to sink new roots, meet new people, and begin over again in mid-life. Her frustration culminated one evening when having worked late, she was driving home and stopped at a red light when she was hit from behind by a drunken driver. (The irony wasn’t lost on her.) Her car was severely damaged, and she, suffering from whiplash and a series of cuts and bruises, was taken to hospital by ambulance. Once she was released, a policeman took her home to her townhouse, where she noticed that the front door was wide open. Getting out of the car, she realized that her townhome had been ransacked and vandalized. That was the last straw. All of her pent-up frustration, anger, loss, and grief finally burst; she lost control, began to scream hysterically, and ran across the lawn shouting curses at God and life in general, with the policeman chasing her, saying, “Where is God in all of this? Why is God letting this happen? Why is God asleep?” Suddenly, just as she heard her own curses as an answer, everything became calm. She ceased running and stopped shouting because she felt a flood of calm and peace inside herself, which she had never experienced in her life before. No magic lights went on, no divine voices, and she made no claims of “miracle” afterward, but, for one second, she realized that no matter the storm, the loss, or death itself, God was still in charge of this universe. One second of realization was all it took. Calm returned, and she has essentially remained calm since then. In our Gospel reading from Mark, Jesus is in a boat with the disciples when a gale comes up, and the waves break into the boat so that it is almost swamped. But he was in the stern fast asleep. The disciples woke him and said, “Master, do you not care? We are going down!” Jesus woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet now! Be calm!” And the wind dropped, and all was calm again. The parallel between these two stories is clear. In essence, both stories tell us that God is still in charge of this universe, every counter-indication notwithstanding. What calms the storm in life is not that all of our problems suddenly disappear but that, within them, we realize that, because God is still in charge, all will be well – whiplash, bruises, ransacked houses, alcoholic spouses, lost houses, lost jobs, loneliness, and the shadow of death itself notwithstanding. All will be well because, even asleep with his head on a cushion, God is still lord.