At our home in Massachusetts, the power turned off last Saturday night around eight p.m. All around the branches creaked, cracked, thudded to the ground. The 13 inches of snow took the leaves of our cherry tree completely to the ground. Although we wouldn't know it that night as we snuggled in tight under our heavy covers, it would be six more complete days before the power restoration. As our house is in the woods and we have no wood stove, we would also have six days without running water or heat, as well as the usual comforts of lights and refrigerator.
It was a long, stressful week, bouncing from one friend's house to another. The children were cranky and confused and probably a little afraid. The roads were dangerous with downed wires and massive trees hung precariously across power lines. The house, when we came to check on it, became colder and colder, filling with the smell of a fridge full of food now gone sour and toilets flushed with buckets of water.
It was, admittedly, hard to keep a happy face. I had laundry to face and nowhere to do it, including a pile of soiled clothes from a child who kept having accident after accident. Not wanting to outstay our welcome anywhere, we spent afternoons driving in the car. This allowed the kids to nap.
It was frustrating and annoying and difficult, to be sure. In the midst of the powerlessness, however, shining pearls of truth dropped into our lives, like those heavy trees arriving with certainty to the ground. We connected with friends and neighbors whose hospitality and kindness carried us through our days. We had meals and conversations we never would have had otherwise, making a host of new memories, and for a week setting aside entirely the TV, the computer, even the phone.
What is the true power? I have always believed it is love--not the sentiment, but the lived, expressed verb of love. This is what we met in the faces of those who took in our family of five and housed us and fed us breakfast and shared with us a fellowship of common humanity.
I like electricity, of course. For all sorts of reasons. But I am grateful to have been reminded of the true power source in my life, in the lives of my children. The internet for all its marvels, does not connect us, nor the telephone, nor the television, nor the busy demands of a household with all its incredible machines. "Only connect," wrote E.M. Forester about a century ago. Our connections are precious treasures.
That first morning I found myself standing on my street, trapped. A tree down on one side, wires on the other. My cell phone had no signal. We had no water, no heat. From the houses around us emerged the neighbors I have spent years making connections with and I was no longer alone, nor was I trapped, nor was I without the essentials of life. To the contrary, in the most profound way, I had everything I needed.
Sometimes a disaster is truthful--and truth isn't a disaster, but a reminder of power in our lives. We truly do not live by bread alone, but in and through and with one another, find, discover, remind, and reclaim the Divine reflection, the indwelling divinity, Love expressed, the Love that needs no outlets, not motors, no wires, no repair.
--Rev. Sam Wilde
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