“Detroit Metro Airport in Romulus set a record with 4.57 inches of rain, more than doubling the previous high-water mark, 2.06, notched in 1964. . . .
On the southbound Lodge near Six Mile, with no movement on the freeway, folks with nothing to do except wait for the road to clear were standing outside taking iPhone photos and chatting. A van also was submerged in several feet of water.” Detroit News
Tuesday August 12
We had three guest rooms available last night, just needing clean sheets and towels. Good thing. Two women on Lansing Reilly’s kitchen team, and one faculty member, couldn’t make it home in the storm. Lots of mopping water in the basement too, like a lot of Detroiters last night. That’s what guest rooms are for, offering someone welcome.
Here’s a storm story from today’s News. Teams of divers searched flooded low spots on the roads checking to make sure no one was trapped in a car down there. The diver story brought me back 40 years to the western high plains. Five fellow teachers (Red Cloud Indian School) had driven the c. 350 miles to Denver for some reason I no longer remember. On their way home a blizzard overwhelmed them. In winter out there it is not uncommon to hear of a car found on the side of a highway with its people frozen dead inside. People out there know about that. My friends did too. They stopped when they could no longer see past the hood of the car and turned off the engine to keep from dying of gas fumes. They told us later that they got quiet, each one wondering how much time they had before the blizzard overcame their collective body heat and they began to die.
Suddenly they heard the sound of a tractor. A rancher was driving his fence line in case someone might be trapped in the storm. He led them home and saved their lives. And every hour he bundled up and got on the tractor and rode the fence line again. You never know when someone might need help in a storm. Hospitality is like that, sometimes it just needs ordinary chores, sometimes it saves a life. Either way, the capacity to open our private places and make someone welcome is how we tell one another that we are all in this together. The welcome is the soul of hospitality, the chores are its body. Both are beautiful.
Dom Helder Camera, one of my heroes, wrote about welcome in words people who live around here could stand to read on a day like this. Sent with much affection.
Blessings on your day.
john sj
Today’s Post
It is possible to travel alone, but we know the journey is human life
and life needs company.
Companion is the one who eats the same bread.
The good traveler cares for weary companions, grieves when we lose heart,
takes us where she finds us, listens to us.
Intelligently, gently, above all lovingly, we encourage each other to go on
and recover our joy
On the journey.
Dom Helder Camera (1909-1999)
