For Wilshire Baptist Church
Two weeks ago, I wrote in this space about asterisks and how I used to bang them out on my grandfather’s Underwood typewriter. That typewriter sits on my grandfather’s desk in one of our guest rooms here in Garland, but both typewriter and desk originally sat in his home in Orange, Texas. And as you may have seen in the news last week, Orange took a major hit from Hurricane Laura.
Orange has suffered more than its share of hurricane damage over the years, with Rita, Ike and Harvey in the past 15 years alone bringing devastating winds and flooding. I knew Orange growing up as lush with pines, pecans and palms, along with azaleas, dogwoods and crape myrtles framing its picturesque wood-framed homes. I haven’t been there in years, but news reports and online satellite views show that many of the trees that once graced Orange’s streets are gone. The oak and pecan trees shading my grandparents’ house are among those that were toppled or removed after one of those earlier storms. The crape myrtle that was big enough to climb is long gone. Many streets are dotted with vacant lots where families once lived. It’s enough to make me cry, but I won’t. At least not in public.
A recent email conversation about public mourning and grief in light of COVID-19 had me self-analyzing and confessing for the first time that I have an aversion to events of public mourning. I’ve never attended a vigil or demonstration or marched for a cause. I don’t want or need a president or other politician to be a “mourner in chief,” perhaps because I know how political those moments can be. The one exception for me was a couple of days after 9/11 when I walked with some friends from the office to a community prayer service. I don’t know if that was grief or shock.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t believe there’s a right or wrong when it comes to communal mourning. We all have different needs. Lord knows I’ve written about grief and loss plenty of times here, but don’t ask me to stand in a crowd and light a candle.
But I do pray for our shared needs and losses, and that certainly is true in this year of COVID-19 and racial unrest. I pray for the health and recovery of people I know and don’t know, and for the people of the world as a whole and leaders in science and public policy who are trying to figure it all out. I also pray for understanding and patience, and I pray that politicians and demonstrators on all sides will put away their bull horns and weapons and work together toward the peace and justice they seem unable to show in their actions and words.
And I’m praying for the people of Orange who in the midst of a pandemic are once again working to clean up and rebuild after a shattering storm. I pray for their healing and peace. Amen.