Others Say It Better: May 5, 2011

I am a liar. I said I would continue blogging, but I haven't. I wanted to tell you about John Winthrop's original vision for his Puritan colony in Massachusetts, laid out in his essay "A Model of Christian Charity," the famous "city upon a hill" speech. How God has made some people rich and some poor so that they could honor God by "dispensing his gifts to man by man [rather] than if he did it by his own immediate hands " and "that every man might have need of others . . . [and] be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection."

But the tornado happened in Tuscaloosa last Wednesday. Normal life stopped. And then people acted out Winthrop's vision, especially the part about a community in peril:

"Question: What rule must we observe and walk by in cause of community in peril?

"Answer: The same as before, but with more enlargement towards others and less respect towards ourselves and our own right. Hence it was that in the primitive Church they sold all, had all things in common, neither did any man say that which he possessed was his own."

This tornado has taught me the lesson that objects lose value when they cease to exist, so the objects that still do exist feel like they belong to all. Door signs––mi casa es su casa––become literal. Wallets open to buy others food, toiletries, and, more importantly, drinks to share stories over. "Where were you?" "What did it sound like?" People say "How are you?" and "I'm glad to see you" and mean it. Trivial enmities cease to exist. Some of the haves become have nots, and the have nots become have even less. People are screwed. But people are also loving and sharing and helping one another like I've never seen before. It's a beautiful moment. Yet moments, by their very definition, are an indefinitely short period of time. But those who were here, who lived through this storm, will live in this moment for a very long time . . .

I don't think I can put this experience into any more words, but there are those who have done so, well: Brian Oliu, BJ Hollars, Michael Martone, and Wendy Rawlings (you have to know what you had to know what you lost).