Wow, what a week. I’m sorry for having taken so long to post again, but I’ve been exhausted.

So on my birthday, at the end of a week without power, without ice, without hot baths, without internet, without “WATCH TV” as the boy shouted just an hour into a week without TV, without hot food, without knowing where I might find a tank full of gas to allow me to drive the family to a place that wasn’t without those things, without sleep cause the total dark and quiet kept the boy awake most of the night, at the end of all of that, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to my city-in-law.

Frankly, I’m amazed by the beauty of this city.

I’ve never been in a blackout that last more than a few hours. I’ve never been afraid about where I might be able to find food for my kids. I’ve never worried about not being able to drive to safety because I didn’t have enough gas and couldn’t buy more.

And yet, this city took care of each other in a way that I had hoped would happen, but have rarely experienced.

I saw strangers help push a car into the gas station. I saw neighbors offering neighbors ice, the single most valuable commodity perhaps next to gas, without expectation. I saw Star Market find a way to sell bread, peanut butter, jelly, chips and diapers to a city desperate for the security of “maybe enough” to make it through an extended power outage.

And so I feel the need to say thank you.

Thank you to our police department for working endless hours to keep us safe.

Thank you to our fire department for standing between us and any accident imaginable.

Thank you to the EMS, Hospitals, Doctors, Nurses, and all those who worked to keep us and our loved ones healthy and alive.

Thank you to all of Huntsville Utilities and their staff who never stopped working to restore power.

Thank you to all the Huntsville City Schools Teachers and Principals who put their own lives at risk to protect our children as they were dismissed during the height of the storms.

Thank you to Exxon on the corner of Whitesburg and Lilly Flag for finding a way to sell gas in a dark city.

Thank you to Wavaho in Laceys Spring for doing the same thing.

Thank you to O’Reilly’s Auto Parts on South Parkway for helping a guy replace a dead car battery right at closing time.

Thank you to Domino’s Pizza for selling hot pizzas at a cheap price during the blackout.

Thank you the lady in Publix who saw me tying to hold 15 items in my arms and found a basket for me.

Thank you to Publix for having the boy’s chicken once the power came back on.

Thank you to Laurel’s parents for looking out for us.

Thank you to my mom and sister for giving us a break from the cold showers for a couple of nights.

Thank you to Laurel for holding my hand when I was worried.

Thank you to the girl for reading Harry Potter to me by candle light.

Thank you to the boy for saying, “I love you” for the first time after the power came back on.

Thank you to the dark for letting the stars shine as they never have before.

Thank you Huntsville. I told my daughter once that no matter what people try to tell you, love will change the world. Thank you for showing her this to be true. And my, my, my, it’s truly is a beautiful world.

Thank you.

Listened to: Beautiful World from the album “Man at Work” by Colin Hay

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Wisdom comes often in small packages, and words are often small packages of meaning waiting to be opened. This is the beauty of poetry; it is a gift that I do not have. To capture meaning in the smallest of packages. To express that meaning in a single word. In this, I am lost as a writer. I am in awe of those who can write poetry. For me, it takes a plethora of words. But there are times when meaning is grasped in a small package. The problem is that this meaning is elusive.

I read Elie Wiesel’s Night for the first time quite late in life. I believe I picked it up for some light summer reading between college and seminary. Maybe I thought it would be a good Beach book . . .

Of course I knew it was a holocaust book, and I think I had avoided it for that very reason. The extermination of a entire race of humans while the world watched was not really something that my “recently freed from reading lists” mind was ready to grapple with. I was, after all, still going to live forever. Extermination wasn’t possible, and so dealing with it in literature just wasn’t necessary.

Much of that changed for me in 1991, but that’s a story for a later time.

So, I picked up this tiny book and began to work my way through the evil that humans are remarkable skilled at inflicting on others.

And in its opening sentence, I met a man who would forever change the course of a young life: Moishe the Beadle. If I may be forgiven for being a young geek, he was Obi Wan, Yoda, Gandalf, and perhaps most of all, Mr. Spock, rolled into one. His is the wisdom of the ages in a small package.

Elie writes of Moishe in Night:

He had watched me one day as I prayed at dusk.

“Why do you cry when you pray?” he asked, as though he knew me well.

“I don’t know,” I answered, troubled.

I had never asked myself that question. I cried because . . . because something inside me felt the need to cry. That was all I knew.

“Why do you pray?” he asked after a moment.

Why do I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?

“I don’t know,” I told him, even more troubled and ill at ease. “I don’t know.”

From that day on, I saw him often. He explained to me, with great emphasis, that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer . . . (Wiesel, Elie. Night. 4-5.)

As Socrates taught us, questions open up dialog. They are the tiniest package of wisdom that I know of. They are troubling. They put us ill at ease. They wake us up at night. The frighten us in the brightest day. The chill us as we suffer through the hottest summer in history. They are the first realization that there is someone/something outside of ourselves. They are our attempts to bring order to the chaos that surrounds us. And so in the voice of a scary smart little girl, we look to the sky and ask in a quiet, child-like voice, “Why?”

That is the smallest package I’m capable of creating, and it’s wisdom is always elusive. Questions possess a power and a wisdom that are lost in the answer. Perhaps, in other words, some questions aren’t meant to be answered.

The problem of evil may be one such question. I think it’s important to acknowledge that I don’t know everything. I think it’s also important to keep asking questions. Question inspire dialog. Dialog leads to connection. With connection comes the possibility of wisdom. And so we ask together in child-like voices, “Why?”

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