On Floods and Overcoming
Existing in this world and caring about your neighbor has always been complicated. It has always meant living in the tension between joy and pain.
The Guadalupe River rose around 30 feet in less than ninety minutes around four o’clock yesterday morning sweeping away cars, whole RV parks with people trapped inside, and over two dozen young girls at a camp that had been welcoming campers by the river for over one hundred years. In some places, the warnings couldn’t be issued fast enough, or were missing all together. Upstream it had rained an improbable five to ten inches in a matter of hours. Forecasters said the odds of that much rain in one day should have been around one-tenth of a percent.1 And yet here we are.
Bystanders described the horror and their own helplessness at hearing the screams of people being washed away and yet because of the darkness of the night and the volume of the river, they could do nothing. Even trained rescuers who mobilized mid flashflood couldn’t save everyone, despite pulling off over 200 river rescues in the night.
The New York Times noted that flash flood probabilities are worked out by NOAA, which of course is one of the many organizations that has seen huge cuts in personnel from the current regime. Fewer people working means it's harder for them to stay on top of forecasting and watching the big storms which are ever more frequent and violent.
Here in Tennessee we’ve been subjected to over six months of tornado warnings, something that has increased exponentially in the twenty years I’ve been here. Tornado concerns used to be isolated to a few big storms during March and April. This year we had watches and warnings from December through June.
The literal flooding in Texas came the day after the horrendous bill passed the house, a bill that will strip away resources from people who are already hanging on by a thread and now many of whom will lose access to health insurance and food aid. In addition, this bill walked back many measures addressing this ever-worsening climate crisis. That has to feel like a whole different kind of flood, rushing towards our most vulnerable.
And the news cycle feels like rounds of flash-floods over and over again. I see friends withdrawing into themselves feeling the despair of it all: swept away by the flood of information.
But withdrawing is never the answer. Action and connection is. Reaching out to each other in the midst of literal and virtual floods is the key to not just surviving, but to overcoming together. I get the horror of it all and I too feel the drag downwards where it seems as though sinking into internal darkness is the only route we have left. In these times, I call a friend. I make a lunch date. I attend a protest, adding my voice to the many because each voice added makes a difference. I march in the Pride Parade with my church and celebrate with 150,000 people lining the Nashville streets in what I believe was the best attended parade and festival to date. Our joy and communion rose to cover the city.
A friend of mine who hadn’t marched in the parade before expressed concern about counter protesters. “I doubt they’ll come,” I said. “They’re bullies. They don’t turn out when there’s this many of us.” And I was right. Queer joy was on display at every turn and not a single naysayer or misguided guy with a sandwich board was in evidence. They’d been swept away by a different kind of flood: a flood of joy.
Existing in this world and caring about your neighbor has always been complicated. It has always meant living in the tension between joy and pain: knowing that experiencing joy and grace and communion is essential to dealing with the pain and the horrors and the losses. It has always been both, and I suspect it will continue this way for as long as there are humans trying to figure out life on our little blue and green marble.
Support relief efforts sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas here.
What If
What if the world is dying? Do we leave that which we love? What if democracy is failing? Do we abandon hope? Everything and everyone we love Has always been dying The flip side of loving That which is mortal That which is finite Everything we love has limits Our love does not
“I wish I could still believe in God, but I can’t be a Christian anymore because of ______” Fill-in-the-blank with racism, misogyny, homophobia, toxic capitalism, and so on. I’ve had this conversation with different people almost word-for-word over and over. White American Christianity has so defined God that many people cannot separate God from the toxic theology they were taught.
But this isn’t the God I see in the Bible. The Bible shows us a God meeting people where they are and nudging them towards justice and total thriving for all: shalom. The Bible details arcs of justice and societal reform. If we understand how radical those arcs were in the context of the day, we can extend them forward into the future and figure out how to work for justice, total thriving, and societal reformation in our day.
I grew up in that first world view. Come along, and I’ll tell you the story of how I escaped, and I’ll show you a theology that I believe paints a more accurate picture: a faith for the common good where everyone thrives and no one is left out.
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Anna Elisabeth Howard writes highly caffeinated takes on shalom as a lens for everything from her front porch in Hendersonville, TN where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is a community organizer and movement chaplain with a background in youth and family ministry and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. An avid hiker and backpacker, many thoughts start somewhere in the middle of the woods, or under a waterfall. She is a regular contributor to Earth & Altar and her latest book is Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good.
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I read this late last night in New York Times’ article that has since been paywalled and I cannot find the exact quote to link to.
This is so beautifully stated. We lived in Texas for six years. We live in Indiana now. We are bluish-purple dots in a red state and we understand just how complex each situation is. We need compassion and to overcome it all together.