April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
EDITORIALS

Stormy lessons


The day after the ice-out that darkened and chilled homes, schools and offices, one of our teenage daughters exclaimed, "I'll never take electricity for granted again."

While it's always welcome when an adolescent expresses gratitude, almost every one who went without had a new appreciation for lights and heat. 

At least, for a day, before we rushed back to our distractions. 

But losing power, in several senses, reminds us of the veil that separates chaos from order. "Let there be light," God first says, then proceeds to set the world in order. 

This thin veil also makes possible the function and order of society as well as our personal ethics. We like to think we'd always be moral and proper, kind and loving. 

Let's be frank: it's easier when we're warm and can see each other. 

Here, during our days of darkness last month, many of us learned that kindness and charity can extend in new directions. Some had lights and heat and welcomed neighbors without. Meals and homes were shared and offers multiplied. On gloomy streets, neighbors passed each other with suitcases and traded tips and reassurances.

For those without power, the episode created the opportunity to say, yes, we need a home and a meal, thank you. That's good exercise for the soul. 

Receiving carries its own burden. But it also teaches us a few lessons about how to give, gracefully. The divide between those with and those without power, even on same block, should illuminate the chronic pain of more constant deprivation in a prosperous society. 

Questions remain: Would we open our homes for strangers in the same way as we did for people we know and like? In our churches, did we poll members to see who needed help and who could give it? What could we do better next time? And what did we learn about serving others who are always in need, not just for a few days? 

Rather than decry our dependence on electricity, that magic and invisible current, we can renew our thanks for it and other blessings. There was a human, even a spiritual, comfort and content that arrived moments after hearing the quiet roar of the furnace and the buzzy hum of appliances. 

Just remember what it was like in the cold gloom. 

Hearing vocations

When we speak or hear of vocations, most of us think of the men in black or the women in habits. Thankfully, Catholics have greatly expanded the notion to include many roles within the Church but also outside. In this special vocations issue, we explore some of these paths and payoffs. 

Marriage is a vocation, as can be single adulthood. The work we do should be a calling, though many of us mediate between our ideals and the bills. 

"Vocation" derives from the Latin words for voice, to call, and summons. After years of parish work, and before that a decade in Latin America, Peg Vamosy of Stamford heard that sound again, as profiled in this issue. 

"God calls all of us to something, and finding that may take time," she said. But a vocation does not require we save the world in an exotic setting. 

"When I was in the Peace Corps in Honduras," Ms. Vamosy recalled, "my sister said, 'You're doing God's work down there and I'm just sitting here knitting mittens for my children.' I said, 'That's God's work too. I certainly couldn't do it.'" 

Sometimes our vocation is to bloom where we are planted.

(1/8/09)

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