Losing your way in the storm

Yesterday and last night horrible weather hit parts of the United States. A tornado touched down in a "risk" population - a trailer part community - in North Carolina, leveling everything. People with so very few things were left with no-thing.

Here in the New York/Metro area, relentless winds of over 40mph whipped through. Due to the grid nature of the majority of Manhattan, even a slight wind is magnified going across the cavernous crosstown streets. New Yorkers - creatures of habit who carry umbrellas in inclement weather - were stripped of their portable,fragile shelters by the hundreds; each black fabric mushroom blown inside-out, eventually resembling rather grotesque oversized, aluminum gilded honeysuckles tumbling down the street or growing out of trash cans on street corners.

On the 37th floor of my office in a high rise building in Manhattan, everyone in my department was on pins and needles as the building creaked, popped and swayed - almost perceptibly - in the wind. It sounded more like the Jolly Roger on the 7 seas than a building of steel, marble, glass and concrete.

I left the office after 7pm and fared better than most, the oversized fiberglass golf umbrella C had given me shielding me as I fought the gale coming off the East River. Got into the building w/o getting wet, got into the car and made my way slowly onto the ramp for the FDR Drive northbound. Sections of this inner city highway system are notorious for their lack of appropriate drainage. The FDR/Harlem River Drive has several of these pooling areas. Thankfully, I didn't get sogged down.

The fog and rain were so thick that the uppermost lights strung on the Geo. Washington Bridge's cables could not be seen. OK... I had better turn on the traffic report on the AM newsradio band.

Unfortunately, I caught a story mid-stream. All I heard was that over a hundred people or so were huddled in mid-town with little shelter out in the elements. How horrible.... what had happened? A building fire? A subway car derailed?

No. NONE of those scenarios. It turns out that hundreds of people had been camped out, waiting for midnight when certain select stores would open to sell the new Playstation 3.

A game.

A video game.

Let me be one of the people in this country who has the chutzpah to bring up the topic of the elephant in the middle of the living room.

What have we come to that an individual would sit on a lawnchair since Sunday in order to purchase a 'state of the art' video game (which currently has only one operable application!!) costing about $500. Subsequent interviews revealed that most buyers were going to sell the unit they had just purchased on e-Bay for nearly $3,000, counting on the hunch that someone was dying to be the first on their block to have this wonder.

What of need - true need? What of necessity? What of earning a living? What of greed? What can you and I do to rectify this rather obvious tilt away from the sublime to the ridiculous?

I urge you to consider your blessings as Thanksgiving is on the horizon next week. First acknowledge then count your blessings. The best things in your life may NOT be "things" after all.

Once the turkey has disappeared via meals, left overs, sandwiches and soup, think/pray about Advent and what outlook or discipline you might embrace for that season of expectancy and longing. I certainly pray that you won't lose your way in the storm of commercial pressure to buy, buy, buy and go, go, go.

Perhaps you need think no further than visiting the website for ERD and make contributions in the names of the loved ones on your list. Your gifts will benefit those in need - like those without anything in Wilmington, NC or other devastated places in this world of God's. Look for the True Light of Advent and Christmas...... it won't be emanating from a Playstation 3.