The events of the week and the time of year have sure got me thinking. As I’m sure they have you…as they have everyone.
It’s beautifully peculiar - to a person, the people I have talked to, the people I have seen and heard interviewed all come back to one thing - how grateful they are. Isn’t that something? How grateful they are that they are alive, that they are upright, that they were able to help. And even for those who lost the most, how grateful they are for the support, and how grateful they are to have been able to love the ones they lost so soon and suddenly. While it comes at far too high a price - far too high - aren’t we all a little grateful, too, for the pause. For the moments being taken to say I love you. To hold the hug a little longer. To stop. Because this moment, right now, is a gift. And we are grateful.
And isn’t it something, that thing that is in the eyes of every Bostonian, every person we have seen and heard from West, Texas? It’s whatever comes after determined, whatever is beyond resolute, and I can’t help but recognize it. I remember that feeling from our Spring of 2010. In early May, when the rain came and tried to wash away our city. My city. For my Nashvillians out there, do you remember thinking, “No. No, by God, not my town.” We Are Nashville. Remember? I’d lived here for almost twenty years by that spring and Nashville was home - but in the early mornings, steaming afternoons, and late nights of the next few months, digging through the rubble and rot and the mold and the sewage, I fell in love with this town as passionately as I’ve ever been in love with anyone or anything. And I wasn’t alone. We all fell in love with a place in a way I’d not known was possible. And we would do anything - anything - to protect it and to put it back together again. I’m grateful for that. For knowing how that feels. For knowing that we, as broken creatures, are capable of that much.
I read a post from a friend who lives in Boston, posted two days after the bombing. In less than forty eight hours, she was on her way to work. She said, “Filled with love and pride as I walked to work today. LOVE this city and the people who work here.”
And I thought, “Yes.”
Yes. I know what you mean.
That same morning there was a woman on NPR who told the interviewer as she was getting on the morning train, “No one wants to be here. None of us want to be here. We want to be home, with our families. But you get up 15 minutes early, you get your coffee, and you get on the train, and you go to work. Because there are people who can’t.”
Yes ma’am.
Then I read about Dorothy Kucera, one of the West, TX, “little old ladies” that I recognize from my own history, who showed up for her weekly hair appointment at Headquarters Beauty Salon on Friday morning, after much of her town was blown away on Wednesday. She wasn’t alone, by the way, there were five others with her, sitting under the blow dryers in their tight little curlers and fresh rinse. The windows of the salon had been blown out, and were covered with plywood. To quote the story - “‘We’re alive,’ she said, looking at the women, who nodded in return. ‘We’ve got all our babies.’”
Yes ma’am.
We Are Nashville. We Are West. We Are Boston.
I don’t think God or anyone expects us to be thankful for tragedies like West, like Boston, like May of 2010. Given the choice, we would not wish for any of it. Ever. But I do believe, with all I have, that it is God who makes tragedies like that turn into something magnificent. Into something so beautifully strong. Who takes the hate literally out of the air and molds into a fierce and furious love. Who weaves together newly grateful hearts, somehow, inexplicably making stronger the very people and places that were threatened. It is love, I suppose. It is powerful. And it will win. Every time. It will win.
