Recovering from a Storm
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a feature in our home. During a week exploring Ashville’s brilliant fall foliage, we came upon a giclee triptych of those gentle peaks: layer upon layer of rolling hill, seeming to go on as far as the sunset.
With just our carry-on luggage and not wanting to ship painted cavasses home, we opted for pieces we could pack (rolled-up prints, smaller pottery). Collecting the business cards of the many artists we wanted to patron, we planned to return to the mountains for another round of foliage appreciation, Blue Ridge hiking, and art exploring.
Last week, Hurricane Helene presented the unimaginable to those same communities.
Just the same as many of you, for the past week I have had western North Carolina and their beautiful people firmly on my mind. I had planned for today’s newsletter to feature the fun, sporty stewardship campaign that starts in earnest this month. However, as story after story comes in of Helene’s devastation, from Florida and all the way up through North Carolina, my heart has been pulled there instead.
After a natural disaster or communal trauma, there is a distinct swirling combination of shock, solidarity, strength, and exhaustion. When the devastation is beyond comprehension – as it so often is – your body and your mind shift. You may not have spoken before to neighbors down the block or the next town over, but now you’re on the same haphazard team.
You become experts on things you never wanted to be an expert in: the best way to make it through the mud, to find signs of life, to filter huge amounts of water, to muck and gut homes, to organize debris, to make gas last longer than it ever has before.
All of a sudden, you know how to use power tools and know that everyone needs a tetanus shot ASAP. In the blink of an eye, you become a community supply distribution specialist. The internet, if it’s available, is suddenly a trusted place, with shared documents providing information for shelter, supplies, help needed and help to offer, people missing and people found. Any building left standing, especially if it has power, can be a hub to organize the recovery. It does not matter what it was used for before.
This work is the most beautiful and most awful thing to do and to witness. It never leaves you.
Eventually, when the debris is cleared, power and communications are restored, and schools reopen, things will go ‘back to normal’ as the years-long recovery process continues. You go back to nodding at the bus stop stranger but not speaking. You are once again accountable to your job, to school attendance. The bubble of your world expands again to include those outside the disaster.
For many communities in western North Carolina and down through Florida, ‘normal’ is a long, long ways away. For some communities, a ‘new normal’ will never appear.
Hurricanes come off the Gulf of Mexico multiple times a year. Many times, they are devastating, either to small communities or large ones. They take lives and level homes. Because they are so frequent, there is infrastructure there for recovery. The people of those places have the muscle memory of what hurricane preparation and recovery looks like. If they haven’t been impacted before themselves, they’ve helped a nearby community who has.
Hurricanes don’t happen in the mountains of western North Carolina. A creek-side community is not prepared for the 1000-year flood possibility.
As each impacted state works through its own recovery, I am especially heartbroken for the communities that will no longer exist because of this storm, and the communities who very reasonably thought that this never could have happened.
As United Methodists, when our heart breaks, we are moved to action. United Methodists and many others in all these states have not only been displaced and affected by the storm, but they are also organizing to provide relief and restoration to their communities.
Many areas are still not prepared for volunteers, even the well-trained Emergency Response Teams that our United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) coordinates. What we can do today is provide prayer and resources.
In times of disaster within our country, it is helpful to donate directly to local churches and Annual Conferences. These Annual Conferences mobilize their local disaster relief response as well as distribute funds to the local churches leading recovery efforts.
The links below go to the storm recovery fund for the most affected conferences:
Western North Carolina Conference ->
Alabama-West Florida Conference ->
As communication is restored in some places, stories of hope are also reaching us. Churches and church camps have been turned into large recovery hubs for their region. Many who were feared dead have been found safe: scared and scarred, but safe. Those who have resources are sharing with those whose earthly possessions were literally washed away.
Today is hard. And, there is hope for tomorrow. Through our earnest prayers and our generous hearts, we can hold both the hard and the hope together.
With much love,
Pastor Karyn
A Prayer for the People of Western North Carolina from Bishop Ken Carter
O God, we place our trust in you.
As the wind and rain has passed through the mountains
of Western North Carolina, we name before you
those whose lives have been devastated.
We especially remember those who have lost so much,
those with the fewest options, the most vulnerable.
Draw near to those who are the most exposed,
the most frightened, the most overwhelmed.
Hold space for a stillness and a peace even in the midst of the storm.
O God, we place our trust in you.
In the aftermath of ravaging wind and surging flood,
inspire those who give themselves for others.
Let that work be done justly, wisely, safely, generously.
Help us to turn toward one another in our need.
Strengthen our bonds of connection and love for each other.
O God, we place our trust in you.
