When disaster strikes…
It’s another line I shamelessly stole from a podcast I was listening to. The person who was being interviewed was a disaster planner. Ie. When a major disaster happens they are one of the people who strategically think through what needs to happen, medicine, fresh water, evacuation, the delicate task of passing on gut-wrenching news and controlling a yapping media that bray for blood and gore.
It’s not an easy task but this person thrives on it because each disaster, whilst terrible, gives her an opportunity to learn how to do things better and help people begin the journey through the ‘valley of the shadow of death’.
On her first day she was with her new colleague/boss and the phone went. It was a shocker of a disaster and the first thing her colleague said after they hung up the phone was ‘I’ll put the kettle on’. Which, when you think about it, is pretty sage advice.
The calamity has happened and you can’t ‘undo it’. A calm head is called for so that the next steps can be thought through calmly and thus effectively. Mistakes will be made if we rush into a situation letting our emotions dictate the order of the day.
A wise old bishop once said that ‘The Church of God floats on an ocean of tea’. Against the backdrop of some smaller episodes of sadness, some of my sager conversations have been over a simple cuppa at the kitchen table. Large dollops of silence reflection and sometimes a bit of scribbling on some paper have made the time productive and fruitful … in the long term. Short term its hard to see through the tears and make sense of the blithering confusion racing around in our head.
So “When disaster strikes … put the kettle on.”