Say your morning prayers
By Roger L Simon
UPDATE AT END
Nashville, January 24, 8:28 PM — I don’t usually put a dateline in my articles, but pretty soon it may be lights out, figuratively and literally.
Middle Tennessee, and a lot of other places, are in the midst of the local version of a typhoon, meaning an ice storm. Tornados are bad enough, but these mothers can wipe out a town or freeze you to death when the power goes out.
In 2021, something like that happened in Texas when 246 people died, not to mention a passel of chickens, because the storm engendered a national shortage.
We’ve been listening to numerous television reminders of that episode, plus advice on what to do—roll up towels and put them at the bottom of doors to conserve heat, open cupboards, turn on all faucets to a trickle to prevent pipes from freezing, and so on. (Had I had the brains to purchase a generator, most of this would’t be necessary.)
And of course, we are supposed to charge all our electronic devices to the top and whatever battery backups we have. Luckily, I was smart enough to pick up some of those, and they are dutifully plugged into myriad outlets around the house. But who knows how long they will last?
All day we have had snow, harmless enough, but the serious ice action is slated to begin in the small hours of the morning. We may wake up to find ourselves without heat in single-digit weather.
If all else fails, we could go into the garage and sit in the Tesla.
Finally, we are lucky. This too shall pass…probably.
But at this particular moment in history, the Snowmaggedon may be God’s way of reminding Americans we are mortal.
As you may have noticed, the world is going crazy.
Up in Minnesota, the Antifa loonies are now arming themselves and acting as if they want to foment a revolution in weather that makes Nashville seem like the Virgin Islands. Who knows where that will lead? Likely nowhere good.
Russia and Ukraine are still murdering each other at a breakneck clip with no end in sight.
And, speaking of trickles, information trickling out of Iran—not the pabulum from the legacy media—indicates that the death toll has been wildly underestimated. President Trump was, shall we say, misinformed when he was told the mullahs were stopping. It has now gone north of 80,000 demonstrators killed, many in their hospital beds, also with no end in sight. The situation is extraordinarily grim.
U. S. forces are massing, but will they act? Nobody knows, possibly not even the president.
Remember “The Year of Living Dangerously”? Well, it’s back—and then some.
What’re we to do? How do we get through this? How do we stay or become stable? Above all, how do we avoid flying apart with the constant madness, near and far, all around us, not to mention natural disasters like ice storms?
Psychiatry, I am sad to say, is dead. Freud was a great writer, but his cure doesn’t work. He even admitted it himself in “Analysis Terminable ad Interminable.” It just revolves around itself. Lately, SRRI mood-elevating drugs don’t seem to be much better.
Exercise, it has been shown, lifts your mood better than drugs, but something else is needed.
What is that? Well, I think we all know. What we have had for years—our faith in God. It’s not an easy road, but the only one I can think of.
Toward that end, I have lately taken to one of the more important (as I understand it) aspects of the Orthodox Jewish tradition: saying a short prayer of gratitude at the very outset of awakening, even before getting out of bed. That prayer, known as “Modeh Ani…” in Hebrew, translates as: “I offer thanks to You, living and eternal King, for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your faithfulness is great”.
I imagine other religions have something similar to recite on rising.
I plan to recite the prayer tomorrow morning before I check to see if we have any heat or electricity.
Whatever the result, the day will start optimistically. A greater force would have given me my purpose.
UPDATE 6:42 AM. It happened. The electricity has gone off. I woke up periodically during the night to check on things, and they were fine. I finally got up about twenty minutes ago, turned on the lights happily, and seconds later, everything went off. My office backup battery doesn’t seem to be working as well. The family is asleep. I see no sense in waking them. They will know soon enough. So I sit here in the near darkness. As of now, it’s still pretty warm but I can’t tell exactly because the thermostat is off. On a bright note, the road below our house is passable because I just saw a car drive by. Hold tight, Roger.
First published in American Refugees
One Response
I notified everyone I knew on Saturday morning to keep me in their thoughts and prayers upon the arrival of the new Ice Age Saturday night at 6:48 PM. I am glad to report that both I and my family survived the catastrophe. I ventured outside and found the snow to be 1/16th inch deep.
We were so lucky.