If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Hurricane Sandy was no joke! While she had the decency to give us lots of time to prepare and she let us know that we needed to give her a wide berth, that was the only mercy she offered. For about 48 hours straight, we got the worst of it. Coming in off the coast like a war-ready armada, she came in slow and hard, driving sea water back up into the rivers and driving fear straight into our souls! Some fared better than others. While I was hunkered down in a trendy Manhattan hotel, others watched their homes burn to the ground. When I was complaining that I had no power (and thus no internet) there were those who had no time to complain as they ran for cover. Still, all of us had our patience tried and our metal tested.
When the lights go out in your world, what keeps you from turning toward the darkness? For the most part, the response to the storm has been a monumental success. There has been no rioting, there has been little, if any, violence. In fact, what's most remarkable has been the outpouring of kindness and generosity. Even a cynical political junkie like myself couldn't help being moved by pictures of Chris Christie (pronounced with a capital R) and Barack Obama (with a Big D) holding hands on a New Jersey tarmac. I thought to myself "if those two could see their way clear to work together to help those in need, humanity might be in pretty good shape". Lions lying down with lambs and all that jazz. Then, I saw the Facebook meme of the Golden Retriever hoisted up on his "companion human's" back for a harrowing rescue and for a second, I thought I was watching the second coming!
And this makes sense. Whether it's simple human instinct or an unconscious awareness that we're all in this together, humans are often known for extreme kindness in the face of extreme tragedy. And thank goodness. If we resorted to the kind of cruelty we are capable of in our everyday lives every time things got dicey, these natural disasters would be a whole lot worse. Even during the mishandled Hurricane Katrina fiasco, we knew that the looting was the result of anxiety over a total lack of resources and not simple depravity. For the most part, when the big one comes (and it seems like this is more and more frequent these days...but that's another blog) we get it right. That's the good news.
So, if sworn enemies are given to find common (or even higher) ground during times of great tragedy, what makes it so hard when times ain't so bad? We often find ourselves in petty quarrels over territory, over broken hearts and even over minor slights. We fear, (based on a lifetime of experience) that the levees around our heart aren't strong enough to keep out the onslaught. We fear that these levees will fail and we will be flooded with all the anxieties and cruelties we built them to protect against. If you and I are indeed separate, the thinking is "I better be prepared to protect what I've got against what you've got". In some ways, the day to day lashes and slashes that we take in the interpersonal world leave us learning and relearning this unfortunate lesson.
Still, there are counterbalancing lessons to be learned from the way we respond in times of calamity. We've all been to funerals where we spot two cousins who once fought like the Hatfield's and the McCoy's lost in a tearful embrace. It moves us to tears. Just what are we witnessing in these moments? From my point of view, we are witnessing our fellow man experiencing the dissolution of the self for a brief instant. In these moments, we are not you and I. We are us! We don't need levees around our hearts if you and I are one and the same.
Somehow, tragedy reminds us that we are not really separate from each other. Perhaps that is what we can glean from these kinds of events that, on the surface, appear utterly destructive. Sadly, we will never know what (if any) is the "point" of affliction. For humans, this is itself a frightening proposition. Why was it that I was able drinking wine and grumbling about the loss of Facebook while others were fighting for their very lives? I do not know and I cannot know. The "why" in this case is not knowable. But what I can know is the beauty of what I saw in the hearts of those who were struggling bravely and reaching out with extended hands to help the strangers who they did not know. That we can all know! And we can allow ourselves to be changed by that.
So, as the Northeastern United States cleans up, recovers and returns to normal, let us pause to consider what we know now that we may not have known quite so clearly before this storm. Before we let the "normal" divisions between us and our sisters and brothers return to what we "know" to be our "rights" and their "wrongs", let us return to what we knew during this devastating storm. We knew that we were not separate from one another at all. We knew that the concept pf "you" and "I" is merely a figment of our imagination. When we pray for those who are still suffering, and meditate and reflect on what we have seen over the past few days, let's take a second and imagine what we know we can be. If we know that we are capable of reaching across the great divide between "you" and "I" and "us" and "them" during times of immense suffering, imagine the power we have to do so when the seas are calm.
After every disaster, there is a chance for a better recovery. Just as the Big Apple now knows that the river banks need to be rebuilt with new storms in mind, so too can we know that we can rebuild our hearts with this newly gained awareness of our interconnectedness in mind. Is this a chance to mend fences with an old friend? Or better yet, how about taking down the fence all together? Could this be an opportunity to show grace and mercy to a perceived enemy?
Life will return to normal. Obama and Christie will return to their old ways of deriding one another and the rescuing man will forget to walk his dog at just the wrong time. That's how things go. But in these precious moments after our this recent tragedy we have an opportunity for great healing. We can integrate these hard-learned lessons into our daily lives, we can use our new awareness of human connectedness as a salve to heal our relationships, our communities and even our very own hearts. We're all in this together!