
We have just celebrated a three-day weekend in the Northeast USA, grateful for two or three days of sunshine that allowed outdoor activities. It’s raining now and I am going to my office this morning. A stiff breeze has just warned me of the necessity of closing my bedroom window and I’m wondering when I will be able to rake up all the grass I mowed into rows yesterday and how messy the project will be…
I blink and shift to a broader consciousness: all the people whose concerns are so much more than my own today. Pictures of tornado damage in so many states in our country’s mid-section are hardly believable. Winds of up to 160 miles an hour have left only shards of wood that were once walls and cars lie piled on top of one another or under huge, uprooted trees. And there seems no end in sight to the storms.
Sorrow and gratitude play within me as I face the day. Is it only luck that has placed me in this small corner of the world? We have flood damage on occasion but have generally been spared from the serious loss occasioned by such weather conditions. What can I do short of leaving home and traveling to disaster regions? (A monetary donation would be minuscule in the face of the destruction.) What then? Prayer of lament? I think so…But what else can I offer to those who find themselves homeless and bereft? How might I best unite myself to others who suffer such loss?