“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” With those words, Charles Dickens began his classic historical novel A Tale of Two Cities, and with these words an islander described life here in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew in 2016, as several of us gathered on New Year’s Day, celebrating another year on this beautiful island and speculating on what the next twelve months might bring.
It might seem odd to most folks that discussions about hurricane recovery efforts might be part of a relatively optimistic discussion about our community, but it makes perfect sense to those of us who were here and lived through it. Yes, there was destruction and disruption at a scale that forced us to stop doing what we wanted to be doing and instead focus on the process of recovery and restoration. But it was the unified approach to the recovery efforts that brought us together as an island community in ways that would likely have been otherwise impossible. Dickens used his phrase to differentiate circumstances in two different cites at the same time, but for us, it reflected the reality of one place and one time, as the hardships and the blessings flowed together. The blessings would not have been experienced without the disaster.
The problem is that lessons learned and bonds formed during adversity aren’t necessarily strengthened during prosperity. In fact, it seems like the opposite is more likely. The passage of time and subsequent growth of our community has pushed those hard-learned lessons and relationships further into the recesses of our minds, and many of the people involved in those wonderfully challenging weeks and months are no longer a part of our community. Yet there are still many of us here who have not forgotten the beautiful transformation that took place when all of our energies were devoted to overcoming our common adversary, forcing us to strip away artificial barriers like demographics and neighborhoods. We remember, and look forward with optimism, because we know how we respond when difficulties arise.
It would appear, therefore, that one of the primary challenges that faces the longstanding members of our community as we embrace 2024 is ensuring that we pass along this critical component of our cultural identity to those who have recently arrived and our neighbors who will move here in the future. We might want to assume that our response during Hurricane Matthew was instinctive and part of overall human makeup, but that doesn’t seem accurate – at least not anymore. Based on the spirit of division in our country, it no longer seems that “love thy neighbor” is something that is readily embraced. As a result, the best way to ensure that our community is able to respond to future challenges in a manner similar to the past is to make our love for one another here so obvious and palpable that potential newcomers accept it as a condition of moving here. Don’t come here to boss others around, and don’t come here to be a recluse; instead, come here to embrace a sense of community unlike any other.
I guess that should be our New Year’s resolution then – to love our neighbors as ourselves, better than we have ever done in the past. I can think of no better way to prepare ourselves for the challenges that will certainly arise in the year to come.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron