By Rev. Carol Bodeau
Dear Friends,
It has been just one week since hurricane Helene moved through the southeast and brought catastrophic flooding and damage, the likes of which are utterly unprecedented in our region. Many of us have family and friends who were directly impacted by the tragedy, even while our own area of Knoxville was largely undamaged. I cannot really even begin to describe the magnitude of this event for the people of Appalachia and further south.
As some of you heard when I spoke about this the Sunday morning after the hurricane, I had family in Asheville, which was hit so hard by the storm. My family is now safe, having managed to leave NC and make their way to TN, where there is running water for showers and cooking, where electricity is reliable, and where there is no ever-present physical evidence of the devastation. But of course, they and all the rest of us are still profoundly impacted. Members of our congregation have been working hard with various volunteer organizations and efforts to get needed supplies into the hardest-hit regions. Others of us have contributed materials or money to the efforts. And all of us have been sending prayers, good wishes, and love to our immediate east. And we know that this will be a long-term project.
Last Sunday, I spoke of my own realization about how easy it is to compartmentalize such things, to say “gosh, that’s awful,” but not really take in the magnitude of catastrophic events, unless and until they become personal. And this, for most of us, has become pretty personal. It’s just too close for it to not be.
Perhaps that image of I-40 collapsed—which actually had no real attendant loss of life or homes—brought the magnitude of the event home to many of us because it did feel personal. At the very least, any of us who like to visit the mountains know that it will be a very long time before we can drive that beautiful, scenic route up the gorge on highway 40 between Knoxville and Asheville. We could relate directly to that little patch of road that so many of us have loved to drive over. And that moment of waking up, of seeing “Oh! It's THAT bad??!” made us look harder at the images coming out of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. Suddenly, the death toll numbers and the dollar figures, the day-count (and in many cases week-count) for how long until people will have electricity or water, well those suddenly had a much bigger impact.
In the coming weeks and months, our task will be to keep this all ‘personal.’ It is really easy to go back to ‘normal.’ In fact, we’ve had to make a lifestyle of ‘going back to normal’ after devastating natural disasters and human-caused tragedies, reported nearly daily in our news. How do we balance staying awake, keeping it personal, and still functioning?
Truthfully, I don’t have an answer to this question, friends. I really don’t. I feel overwhelmed and sad just to think about it all.
But I am glad to know that we are a community of people who care, who are willing to reach out to others, and who continue—in the face of incredible suffering in our world—to both wake one another up, and comfort one another. Thank you for being part of a community of caring and hope.
Wishing you and yours safety and peace in these challenging times.
Rev. Carol
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