c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

CATANIA, Sicily _ The warning comes at 4:15 p.m.

“We just heard that Italian air traffic controllers are going on strike Saturday morning,” a friend here says. “Isn’t that when you are flying home?”

Sure is. I call my travel agent in the States immediately. This is no time to be fumbling with my minimal Italian over a telephone with Alitalia. Within 30 minutes, she has me booked for Friday, rather than Saturday.

Warning appreciated, warning heeded.

I hear and see warnings all around me. Italian drivers love to honk their horns, sometimes as a warning of their determination not to stop. Streets here are covered with hanging Christmas lights, a warning (positive) that festivities are afoot and a warning (cautionary) that traffic will be more bizarre than usual, so relax.

CNN has so many warnings packed into an hour that I feel weighted down.

The Florida ballot snafu and election snarls have come to feel like warnings of difficult times ahead for whomever emerges the winner.

I can’t even escape warnings in a novel. I chose Tom Clancy’s latest, “The Bear and the Dragon,” for this trip. It displays his usual fascination with exotic weaponry, military slang, acronyms and all players _ good and bad _ painted in bold colors with little ambiguity. His warning this time concerns the People’s Republic of China.

So why was John the Baptist so angry with the crowds who came to him for baptism? “Who warned you to flee?” he asked. Well, he had been warning them, for one. So apparently had others in that age of messianic fervor. So had the prophets of old. It would be hard to miss the assertion that God “knows when you’ve been bad or good,” as the song says of Santa.

Maybe the issue for John wasn’t the warning, but their response, namely, to flee. For John, this was a time to repent, not to hide. It was a time to “bear fruits worthy of repentance” in one’s life, not to preserve an old life by fleeing. It was a time to be accountable for one’s decisions, not to bluster about one’s heritage. It was a time to be generous and just, not to cling to wealth while running.

Hiding comes naturally. As children, we believed the world went away when we closed our eyes. If we didn’t hear our parents’ calling, then they hadn’t called. If we “didn’t mean to do it,” then “it” didn’t have any consequences. As teen-agers, we could hide in peer groups, hide in conformist attire, hide in anger.

We could flee accountability in so many ways as children that it is difficult, as adults, to recognize that accountability happens.

Hiding never works, not for long, at least. The nasty and smug words our politicians have thrown at each other this past month will come back to haunt them. The Supreme Court probably will regret its strange decision to venture into presidential politics.

The credit card bills will start rolling in on the eighth day of Christmas. Extra avoirdupois won’t take that long. Dot-com millionaires are feeling the wrath of reality. So are the Palestinian youth who throw stones at Israeli troops and seem surprised when the troops fight back. So are Israelis who have been hiding from Palestinian grievances for decades.

“Stand and fight!” is the mantra in Tom Clancy’s macho world. But overstatement aside, there is some truth in that. Fleeing reality doesn’t make reality go away; it just gives reality more time to gather momentum.

Warnings, then, are necessary. I might wish the world were a more peaceful place, but I certainly wouldn’t ask CNN to pretend. I might wish Christmas gifts had no price tags or last-minute impulse no consequences, but I need the warning of a cash register tape.

What John the Baptist saw is that warnings don’t urge us to flee; they urge us to take heed. God isn’t a hiding place from a world filled with warnings; God is the one whose warnings merit most attention.

DEAEND EHRICH