Storms

I didn’t write a blog post earlier this week because the muse wasn’t with me, and now I’m absorbed in the terrible waiting for hurricane Melissa to make landfall in Jamaica.

When we lived in southeast Florida, we had several friends who were from that island nation. We’ve since lost touch, but our fondness for the country and its people remains. I can only hope that those who could seek shelter elsewhere, that is, those who had the money and the connections in the USA (the richer Jamaicans) have already left and those who could not (the poorer Jamaicans) have a safe place to shelter. Jamaica like other Caribbean nations is prone to regular destruction from Atlantic storms, but governments the world over seem to live in the hope that the next storm will dodge them, and they will not have to invest in protection for their people.

I lived more than twenty years in southeast Florida and witnessed the devastation caused by Andrew in the Homestead area, and to a much lesser extent the aftermath of Rita and several other storms. I swore I would never stay in place beyond a category two storm, because it was terrifying, and we lived at an Episcopal School at the time with newer buildings built to sustain hurricane force winds, and generators to provide electricity.

I also took part in the reconstruction of people’s emotional and spiritual health in the years after Katrina, when I lived on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Some of those hardy folks had already lost everything they had in Camille, thirty-six years earlier. Most of them were philosophical about their losses. “It’s only stuff, Reverend Anne” was what several people told me. I couldn’t help thinking that there are some places where people simply should not have houses. And if they go ahead and build them anyway, they should be prepared to have to repair or rebuild on a semi-regular basis.     

While writing “Bound by an Oath” I did research on any significant weather events, or climatic changes that might have taken place in the fifth century in Britain. Because of the lack of documentation, we really don’t know if the year 415 was a year of drought, or if in the year 426 Britain was ravaged by storms off the Irish Sea, or the North Sea.  Roman records exist for the period of their occupation, and it appears that they thought the weather in Britannia was “wretched”, which might have been words out of my own mouth about living in present day United Kingdom! What Publius Cornelius Tacitus said in his work “The Life of Julius Agricola” was “The weather in Britain is foul, with dense cloud and rain; but the cold is not severe.” He wrote in about 98 AD so things might well have changed in three hundred years, of course.

All this is to say that I could have written about a big storm, or a drought, or famine, if I had wanted to, but nothing like that was integral to the story of love, forgiveness and forbearance that I was telling.

Prayers for the good people of Jamaica. I know there will be plenty of opportunity to donate toward their recovery efforts, and that of the other Caribbean islands that will most likely be affected (poor Haiti!) and I hope you will be able to give something from your own bountiful resources. Whether our government will offer any aid is an open question.