Eliot on Calamity

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that our world has recently known the effect of more natural disasters than usual. Maybe it’s because they receive immediate news coverage, but for an unusual period of time, there’s been one right after the other. I guess this is on my mind right now because we have an office in Nashville where there has recently been catastrophic flooding. Since there is no power in much of the downtown area, our office is likely to be closed all week. Of course, this is a minor problem in comparison to the lives taken and homes washed away.

As has been the case when other disasters have struck, people in Nashville have turned their attention to helping each other through this crisis. Employers have encouraged their employees to participate in relief efforts. Many of our lawyers and members of our staff are volunteering in all sorts of ways to alleviate the suffering of Middle Tennesseans who’ve lost everything. I was looking for a quote that might be meaningful for these days of disaster, and I think I found one from George Eliot:

“What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?”