A contingent of Kentucky National Guardsmen are billeting in the Methodist church hall in St. Francisville, my hometown. They're down in Louisiana to help restore power in Gustav's wake. Some of the folks from the church who sing and play music went over this evening to perform for them, to give something back to these men who have come from so far away to help out.
Turns out that the Guardsmen had made arrangements with a preacher who works for the town police (or the parish sheriff's office, can't remember which) to come hold some kind of Sunday service for them in the church hall. My sister, who was there, told them that if they wanted to have church, well, let's go into the church itself. And so they did. There were no lights anywhere, but the preacher preached a beautiful sermon about the power of the storm and how faith can't keep storms away, but it can help believers endure.
"We sure had church," my sister told me.
We talked just now about what they're enduring this week, and how they still don't have any lights on, and the heat. My sister said, "You know, though, I told the pastor at church this morning that this whole hurricane thing has been a real blessing to me."
"A blessing?" I asked.
"Yeah, a blessing. You wouldn't believe all the good things neighbors out here have been doing for neighbors. People are going to visit each other, and taking food over, because everybody's got to clean their freezers out. People are taking the time just to sit and visit and enjoy each other's company. We have a generation in our camper, and the TV is on in there, but my girls have gotten busy playing games and doing crafts. They're not watching much. It's like old times, and I'm gonna tell ya, it's great. It's so nice to realize what it means to do the right thing by your neighbors, and to have this time with them. This really is what life is all about."
I told my sister to watch out for Hurricane Ike, and to please please please drive up to Dallas if it heads their way.
"Rod, thank you, but we're not going to do that," she said. "We have our animals here, and everything else. Everybody needs everybody else to be here to help out. We'll be fine. But we need to be at home."
There's beauty in that.
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THAT'S CrunchyCon, no matter how your sister leans politically.
Salt of the earth, as they say.
A really nice post. Thanks.
Since 1978, just to use the last 30 years, I have lived where I had no phone, electric power, or TV reception in rural NW Montana, downtown Phoenix, AZ, In a new housing development funded by HUD, an apartment building, out of town on a dead end road, and in a small town of 700 people - where I live now.
I would agree that living the "simple" life in Montana, I was more connected to my neighbors than in any other place. I was least connected to anyone in Phoenix.
But it seems to me that when you stay in one place for a while, your "neighbors" tend to be who you choose, when it is not forced by proximity, rather than lefto choice by technology and travel.
I've also found that surviving a challenging experience together cements friendship bonds that long outlast the experience or results of that experience. A newly formed group of our church's kids and leaders travelled to Montana and participated in a camporee. We got caught in a windstorm while rafting on the Flathead, and we spent hours struggling to get down the river against the current, and at some times, just trying to not get blown back up the river.
Later that year, we did a winter campout and our common shared struggle to stay warm, get dried out, and overcome some serious obstacles continued to cement the unity and friendship of the group.
There is a deep truth to the notion that shared adversity bonds people in ways that shared enjoyment cannot even approach.
Reading your posts on the storms, I'd been wondering why your family didn't just come stay with you when these storms came through. I figured you and Julie would find a spot for them but wondered why they didn't seem to be coming to stay.
Now, reading this, I think I understand. They feel they are needed where they are and that outweighs their own needs. This is the sense of community that we all whine about missing these days.
We will continue to pray for their safety.
My pastor preached yesterday on this theme, of hard times bringing people together and making manifest our mutual dependence. (From God's instructions for passover, and from Paul on church life.)
He connected it to Wendell Berry's recent essay, [ "Faustian Economics," http://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/0082022], suggesting high gas prices can suggest to us how to live more intentionally regarding our resources and travel and consumption habits.
E.g., "our human and earthly limits, properly understood, are not confinements but rather inducements to formal elaboration and elegance, to fullness of relationship and meaning."
I recommend it.
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