When Tragedy Strikes: Hold Hands & Light a Candle

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It’s so easy to be reminded that we are light on a sunny, rainbow kind of day, or under a starry night under a comet or shooting star. Stardust really, a little bit in each of us. We learn this and experience it when we hold each other close. Eyes to eyes, warm breath whispered on our faces. Perhaps a touch. Connection. A reminder we are sharing this moment, right now, and adding a shared presence, to THIS NOW.

I have been in pause since Helene barreled across the Gulf of Mexico and up into the Appalachians and over my former home town of Asheville impacting the French Broad river basin beyond recognition. This morning many friends are still looking for lost loved ones. Community elders, children, precious pets and then of course, personal belongings that likely are entombed in the admittedly, and unfortunate, toxic mud.

And yes, these were “waters.” 

Lots has been written. Even more reported on and captured on video. Whole businesses have evaporated to the boiling point of capacity to adapt. Surrender and even malaise easily understood from afar. But the resilience, the courage, the candles and the community, less common from the outside but from anyone who knew, knows and experienced the love and the sense of community in Asheville and the surrounding area, no surprise at all. 

It’s all so human, tragedy. Reflecting on the horrors in the Middle East, refugees on a scale, also unimaginable, we have plenty of reference points. They are there, around us, on this planet, every day.

And so are the starry nights and the crisp sunlight at dawn.

The “yes” in these waters is in the reminder that we live where tragedies live alongside miracles. Sometimes, we need reminders when those scales get overwhelmed.

And this is where a candle, and holding hands comes in.

Bless you, each and everyone, for your courage to choose tomorrow and to be willing to walk to your “village square” and hold hands and acknowledge the suffering and the sharing of that, alongside the resolve to welcome the dawn, and that we are never alone. All it takes is a match and an open hand.