A good mother once said
“look for the helpers”
so I survey the skeletal
remains of the flood
and see so many caring
giving, sharing what they can.
We are the sinews & tendons
– the fibers of a city
that will surely walk again.
+ David Gate, poet who lives in Asheville
Dear Beloved Community,
In the days since last Friday, when Hurricane Helene devastated so much of the Southeast, our beloved Western North Carolina in particular, you have shared your grief so poignantly. I heard it from you all week, especially on Sunday when nearly every conversation I had was tinged with sadness and loss. We all have deep roots in our North Carolina mountains, don’t we? It’s home, it’s where family lives, it’s where core memories have been made, it’s where we get away for fresh air and calming vistas and a chance to breathe deeply again. “I was just there last week!,” one of you said to me.
Our staff shared a workday together yesterday, and as we began, each one of us shared stories like these. We recounted what we’d seen and heard online, gutting stories of all the floods have taken away: a home, a living, a life. Yet Kyle offered a witness by way of Mr. Rogers, who, years ago, once said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”
“Look for the helpers,” poet David Gate said of his beloved Asheville. “Look for the helpers,” our church’s kids wrote in their prayers for our neighbors in the West. “Look for the helpers,” we say, and find the National Guard helicopters into Swannanoa and Bat Cave, and a son hiking 11 miles up a mountain to find his parents stranded in Little Switzerland, and Chef Jose Andres and hundreds of World Central Kitchen workers and volunteers setting up in Asheville, Boone, and surrounding communities sharing thousands of hot meals. “Look for the helpers,” as mules (mules!) saddled with supplies journey over impassable roads, as regional airports in Greenville, Statesville, Charlotte receive thousands of pounds of supplies to distribute in the mountains, as neighborhoods share chainsaws and grills and generators and what they have with each other. “Look for the helpers,” as buses full of water head from Winston-Salem to Watauga for schoolchildren and teachers, as restaurants in Marion, Hendersonville, Blowing Rock prepare and give away whatever food they have, as you pile high our Baraca Room with supplies for the good folks of First Baptist Asheville to share with their neighbors in need. “Look for the helpers,” as pastor friends around CBF contact us to give of their church’s money to us, so we can buy supplies for First Baptist Asheville, so they can share them widely with the thousands in Asheville in need. Helping from Louisville to Little Rock to Richmond by way of Winston-Salem to Asheville!
As I’ve read and heard time and time again this week, helping is “just what we do here” in the South. We see a neighbor in need, we help. It will be gift and grace for us to fill a fleet of trucks and vans with cases of water, boxes of diapers and tampons, bags of pet food, stacks of peanut butter, and more in our caravan of love on your behalf to Asheville tomorrow.
This spirit carries us into the coming weekend and weeks ahead. We’ll experience it as we gather for World Communion Sunday this weekend. Millions of Christians around the world mark this day, all around the table of Love, the table where help and healing is served. We’ll bring that spirit into our Fall Fellowship gathering on Sunday night – blessing our pets, sharing sides and desserts for our potluck, delighting in a chance to play and be together. We’ll carry it forward in the days leading up to October 13, as we make our financial commitments to the Life Together capital campaign, for the gifts of hospitality, accessibility, sustainability, and legacy we offer to our church and community, now and in the years to come. We’ll renew it again and again, as our efforts for temporary disaster relief grow into commitments to long-term restoration of our neighbors to the west.
“Look for the helpers” won’t negate the pain, or take away the grief, or heal our broken hearts. It won’t make it all right again, or turn back the clocks, or fix the trauma. But looking for the helpers – being the helpers, “here to help each other walk the mile and bear the load” – can help us all to rise. One step, one road, one town, one stream, one community, one hope at a time.
Together in God’s work of Love,
Pastor Emily