What Now?

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What Now?

May 26, 2011 by Amy Welborn

Joplin. More here.

It’s a serious question, I really have no idea, and I really would like to know.

What do people do? Do they rebuild? Move on?

I can’t even imagine.

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

10 Responses

on May 26, 2011 at 10:56 pm Trish

Don’t mean to clutter up your comment box with links, but I found both of these quite moving. And I have no answers to your questions, because I have no ability to even comprehend this tragedy…

http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=17416

http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=FJ9C1CNU
on May 27, 2011 at 2:46 pm priest's wife

I have no idea either- so I’m ‘just’ praying for them
on May 27, 2011 at 8:41 pm bill bannon

I redid our home insurance today partly because of this seeming increase of menace in nature even though our family houses are in an odd area for tornados. Nature is getting outside it’s box and I don’t trust probabilities in light of that. Very awful. One lady lost husband and two children as the three journeyed to Walmart that day. Two Arkansas women last year also lost whole families and I’ve prayed for their faith ever since.
Most houses are underinsured as to actual rebuilding costs….google underinsured homes….and begin to learn. Tornados require a total rebuild wheras fires do not in city areas because fire trucks stop them quick. But tornados are a total rebuild. Hopefully the governments involved out there stop all property taxes accruals and use federal money for the underinsured. Strangely such surfacey but real things to think about will help those mourning to stay in touch with reality. The country has to mandate tornado cellars where there are no basements if the weather is going haywire like this.
on May 28, 2011 at 3:43 am Jeff Hendrix

I can’t answer, Amy. I can say that it is that “terrible megaphone” (Lewis) that can turn human souls from the way, the truth, and the life, or toward Him, Domine, ad quem ibimus.

My cancer is a quiet, solitary tornado; obviously, these aren’t. I thought for a while that BOOKED was a very nice answer to my book’s (Little Guide for Your Last Days) question .. remember it? I think you’ll have to decide that for yourself. It probably still is. Best/blessings
on May 28, 2011 at 6:19 pm Clare Krishan

What to do?
Visit local shut-ins and let them know you care for them in their declining days, since but for the grace of God there go we. Here’s what was under that rubble at that location (the Greenbriar nursing home)
http://d.yimg.com/a/p/cpress/20110525/capt.moms116_524_2011_142303_low.jpg

re: that terrible megaphone,
consider the Google Street View,

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=greenbrier+nursing+home+joplin&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&hl=en&hq=greenbrier+nursing+home&hnear=Joplin,+Jasper,+Missouri&ll=37.062266,-94.517183&spn=0.028972,0.030684&z=15&layer=c&cbll=37.062492,-94.520279&panoid=44UUnv6EPM6ac3IiO0eMwg&cbp=12,357.84,,0,0

the RC Church/school lies immediately opposite … the Blessed Sacrament reposed within the Tabernacle was in the eye of the storm too
on May 28, 2011 at 9:02 pm bill bannon

Amy….cnn shed a little light on your question. They showed in your state how one family was living in tents and FEMA has given them sufficient money to buy a used trailer. FEMA gave another man who was rebuilding sufficient money for new windows. The tent to trailer process hopefully is to await home insurance to rebuild which in 68% of cases according to one estimate still leaves the family with not enough money to fully pay the rebuild as California wildfire victims found out. Hence State Farm recently warned it’s own customers to have their agent use a certain software program to update and raise their limits
probably in response to the Cali uproar by customers. When the media fades away, I suspect we all will not realize the real ongoing long road ahead to get back to almost normal. While these people are in trailers though, they are more vulnerable to any more storms. All homilists of all churches must ask themselves if modern Christianity is sufficiently communicating how deeply Fallen the very universe is when children can be found strewn and dead in Joplin as one lady described what she saw as she walked her area after it passed. Homilies in my very limited small world and life have communicated a much more friendly universe….nothing to prepare us for the truth of this year which is a permanent wound for those who lost children and/ or spouse….to the wind…to the wind for Pete’s sake.
on May 28, 2011 at 11:14 pm KC

About 60 percent will rebuild since the land they own is already their. SOmetimes insurance companies make building on the former plot the thing to do. Still, others will have the twister in their head for years and will want to move away from whatever can remind them of it.

So, once the debris is cleared away, two efforts are at work–ones that take place simultaneously and seen in contradition.

Some rebuild their homes. Others purchase the homes of those have left and rebuild them in hopes of making a profit.

As long as the population density remains, the civil and church and other community institutions will reform and prevail.

The town will no be like it was. But in months most will find it better–since it is newer, since everyone whats to be there, and since the area had a lot of help from government entities.

These things work out. A bit by market forces and a bit by government help. The debris field looks hopeless. All that splintered wood is the fuse that will light and carry its flame to the assistance of the nation. Under that effort, private parties will be buying neglected properties and making them ready for new souls in the neighorhood.

It is a tragic start, but the remaining process works out pretty well, given enough time. This part of the country is used to it by now.
on May 29, 2011 at 5:38 am josie

How do you re-establish your identity when so many and so much has been lost? My heart aches but all I can do is pray.

I am amazed by how flat it is, unlike floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes, there are no sofas, chairs, tables, beds in the photographs from Joplin. Just wood and cars or trucks. Frightening.
on May 29, 2011 at 6:01 am wingtips

The response I am going to write will not be a comforting one, and as you screen comments it is left to your discretion whether or not you publish it. The devastation in Joplin is just that – devastating, echoing on a smaller though no less tragic scale the recent devastation in Northern Japan. Ours, however, is a sentimental culture, which tends to acknowledge tragedy when it hits on a large scale, with a collective hand-wringing which is too often denied when tragic devastation hits on a small, individual, un-newsworthy scale. The degree of hidden suffering that individuals endure on a daily basis, which we do not hear about on the news, is no less real to them as individuals, all precious in the eyes of God, than is the more newsworthy tragedy.

I am talking, for example, about people whose mental and physical health are ruined suddenly by an ADR (adverse drug reaction) and who find themselves unable to work, in constant pain, and unable to move. Some people who are effected in this way have no loving friends or family to prop them up and are shifted into the vortex of a nursing home. Drug companies will hire expensive lawyers to escape liability for this maiming of human life. There are numerous other examples of quotidian tragedy that occur every single day in our prosperous nation. Then there is the tragedy of abortion, which we know about and hear about regularly. Then there are people who lose their jobs in middle age with a family to support (sometimes including a sick spouse or children, who are dependent on the medical insurance provided by the job) and who cannot find any kind of job at all (according to shadowstats, the “official” unemployment rate in the U.S. is grossly understated). And on and on and on. Do friends and family help in such a circumstance? I have often observed that the answer is “No.” Talking about one’s suffering is deemed in our culture to be “self-indulgent” or “feeling sorry for one’s self.” Expecting help from others is labelled as “not being tough” or “not taking responsibility.” Such is the world we now live in.

The reality it, personal suffering of another makes most people very, very uncomfortable. Perhaps because deep down the natural law written in their hearts says to the person experiencing this discomfirt, “You have an obligation to do something here, but it WILL cost you.”

Every practising Christian will agree that we are obliged to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” If the practising Christians in and around Joplin put that into practice vis a vis their neighbors who were hardest hit, these people will be able to rebuild. Material support is vital, but so is the loving support of knowing there are those who see their own frailty and broken humanity in you, who realize that it could just as easily had been their family and not yours. My guess though is that in most instances those able to help will not, and that people who lost their homes will end up in homeless shelters or maybe for a time on couches of relatives or neighbors until they are deemed to be a nuisance. Most people who give charitably do so conditionally. After all, our culture teaches, “I am not responsible for your feelings or your circumstance. You are.”

As to whether I practise what I preach here: I have opened my small home for months at a time to near-strangers who were homeless, and I have given money quietly and generously to people I learned who were in need. I will do so again if I can, when such a situation crosses my path. To do so is difficult, but we are called, each of us, to “sacrificial love” (caritas).

There is a saying, “love those the closest the most.” We need to look around at our neighbors – those in our family, extended family, circle of friends, and see who is in need and try to sacrifice in order to lessen that pain and need, if we ourselves are in a position materially and spiritually to do so. Anything less is a de facto rejection of the gospel.

I know this is harsh but these are my thoughts. If you choose to not publish them, I will not be offended.
on May 30, 2011 at 9:54 am Randy

I imagine there will be people moving on and people rebuilding. It is one of the benefits of such a loss that you do ask these questions. People find out what they really believe is important and what they were just doing because it was comfortable or because they had always done it. The fact that many will start out truly not knowing the answer is a good thing.

I do wonder about “nature is getting outside it’s box.” I am not sure I would put it that way but why are we getting more incidents and more severe than ever. Haiti, Japan, New Orleans, it keeps going. Too many to mention. What is God doing? I mean that question seriously. Is God trying bring about some sort of spiritual self-examination? I don’t know. It does not seem to be working. The book of Revelation talks about a ton of calamities and after it all people did not turn from their sin. Not saying this is precisely what Revelations was talking about but there may be some parallels. Something is going on.