Daily Dose (Oct 2 – 5)

WEDNESDAY OCT 3 —

This week, the power in Sanctuary. The power of spaces and places of replenishment and renewal and healing.

I am writing this in an area of North Carolina that has been pummeled and in places devastated from Hurricane Helene. Cleanup is ongoing. Checking on neighbors and friends and helping wherever we can. You get to see what really matters. You get to see what really makes a difference. You get to see what community is for, as we are on this journey together.

For all Sabbath Moment readers, Daily Dose will be spotty this week, as I am in an area without power or water or wifi. But today, a small business made a place for people to charge their phones and check their emails and make calls. I’ll send this one out today, but don’t worry if you don’t see them every day.
So. Thank you for your notes to me. I am grateful. And I am grateful for the healing gift of the Sabbath Moment community.
And this story from Garrison Keillor to take with us into our week…
In a Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor tells a heartwarming story about Lake Wobegon life on the northern Minnesota prairie, where children knew what it meant to travel a great distance to school. And where a sudden winter storm is life threatening.
In preparation for a winter storm emergency, each child is assigned a storm-home, a place nearer the school, where the child will go, and stay, if the weather becomes too treacherous for travel. On the first day of school, slips of paper are given to each child. The paper says: “Your storm home is with the (blank) family.”
Garrison tells of being assigned to the Krugers. The Krugers were an elderly couple and, as he recalls, very kindly. They had an impeccable house with a fence around a large yard. On normal school days Garrison would walk by the house and imagine what it would be like if he had to take refuge there. He imagines the crackling fireplace, a delicious meatloaf, and a quilted blanket on the bed. And Garrison imagines Mr. Kruger speaking to the principal, and pointing over toward him and saying, “There, that little boy over there, we would like him for our storm child.”

So many of the storms we’ve seen this year (in many parts of our world) have been quite literally life-threatening. And some, deadly.
And some storms, are not. Even so, they still rock our world. And, let us not forget, all storms have stories, with names and faces.
Most storms, in our life and world, are not even weather related, though the effect feels the same. Times when relationships unravel. Health deteriorates. Beliefs crumble. Hope evaporates.
And this much is undeniable: sometime in our life, every single one of us needs a storm-home. And every single one of us has the capacity to be a storm-home to someone in need.

Prayer for our week…
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry

Photo… “Hi Terry, Last night I finished Mitch Albom’s “The Time Keeper”, as I focus on presence, awareness, being in the now… only to cross the International Date Line, four hours later and miss all of Monday! God does have a sense of humor! A cruise is a great way to slow down and lose a sense of time, however. (Photo is west of the Aleutian Islands) Happy autumn.
Grace and peace,” Susie Hahn… Thank you Susie… I’m so grateful for your photos, please send them to tdh@terryhershey.com