Western North Carolina is my spiritual home. For several decades I would spend at least a week in Madison County, near the riverside depot, Marshall, at a camp that served as a home base for home projects out in the county. In the evening, we’d return to camp where the sound of the French Broad River provided a constant reminder of the created world.
By day we worked on trailers and old homes and met those who knew a poverty most of us could barely imagine, dignity and desperation often interwoven through the stories of those we met. By night we basked in the glory of God’s creation and explored the contours of our faith in light of what we experienced that day.
This past week has been tough for me and for Jo, who also had a kind of second home in the mountains at a presbyterian camp and conference center called Montreat. These are what the Celtic people would call Thin Places, and I’ve written about the precariousness of these places in my personal blog this week.
My friends and relatives who live there are all safe, though their lives are momentarily disrupted. And, this of course was not my actual home in the piedmont of North Carolina where they fared just fine.
Yet, I find myself this week tired, down, and more than a little bit sad at times that I don’t expect to be. There is an edge to compassion when the newscasts show devastation in places that I know, and know well – ground I have walked and rivers and creeks I have sat beside. There is a sense of nearness when the dean of the wrecked cathedral in Asheville is a colleague I know personally. There is a sense of pain that comes from kinship with a place when that place is going through so much suffering.
Please join me in holding the people of Western North Carolina in your prayers, and pray for our family as we grieve damage to our spiritual home. As the Body of Christ, we are all connected.
The Very Rev. Bernard J. Owens