Today was my first day helping one of the partners (Russ, this time) to prepare supper. It is quite intimidating to think about creating a meal for 40 but thankfully there were lots of others around to lend a hand, as is so often the case here. Toby and Milton helped with finishing up our afternoon painting job early so I could bake bread (my Mama's delicious "Bedouin Bread"... with some additions), Russ took charge of making a delicious squash soup and slicing up the cheese wheel (made by Russ from Rhoda the Cow's milk) and Toby helped out with cooking broccoli. Somehow we had everything done for this colorful meal and on the table by 6:30 with time to spare for a little story-telling along the way. Whew!
Interesting how life has a funny way of catching you off guard though. Apparently, as the smells of fresh baked bread and spiced squash wafted out of the kitchen this afternoon a tornado touched down in a little town northwest of Atlanta - about 130 miles northwest of us. At one point during the prep. work it started raining so hard that we ran outside to watch for a little while - a beautiful, beautiful sight for this former desert dweller! In fact, it rained so hard that it started raining inside the K-house; rivulets tracked down the chimneys, dripped from the corners of the skylights and fell into puddles on the dining room floor (which we tried to catch with buckets and big towels). But, other than this lovely downpour, there were no indications that anything more exciting was happening so close by.
It wasn't until I went upstairs to my room and glanced at my cell phone that I saw the calls and texts from concerned friends and family who said that our corner of Georgia was "all over CNN." How strange, I thought, to be completely unaware of anything on CNN, much less anything this close to us. The only internet access available here is down in the small office where there are 2 public computers and a few other places to plug an ethernet cable into a laptop and there is one TV on the property that is only used for movies. This has taken a bit of time to adjust to. I remember during my first week here thinking outloud, "How on earth will I know what the weather is?" to which one of the partner's teenage daughter's chuckled and shook her head. "Oh honey, honey..." she said (clearly having heard this before) and pointed me to the reading loft where the daily and weekly newspapers reside.
I'm sure that, if we had been in any danger tonight, we would have had to act in the moment in the best way we knew how, just like those on the highways or houses or mobile homes of northwest Georgia did this afternoon. In that, we are all alike, no matter how much access to information and weather we have. I'm guessing that here at Jubilee someone would have rung the dinner bell (and rung and rung and rung it) or perhaps Comer has a storm siren or perhaps we would have just sought shelter as the need arose. There is no doubt that weather warnings and predictions save many, many lives, but I had to wonder this week if some of the reality of the news is lost in our society's fascination with the places of greatest destruction, most colorful drama, or most fantastic story and the excitement and fear that accompanies these events.
And so I suppose this is lesson number one learned from spending this spring with limited internet access: take life as it comes to you, show love and care for those around you (as my family and friends here and far away did tonight) and, after you have some basic plans, not to worry too much about what might be coming your way until it gets to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment