The Guadalupe River rose around 30 feet in less than ninety minutes around four o’clock the morning of July 4th sweeping away cars, whole RV parks with people trapped inside, and over two dozen young girls at a camp that had been welcoming campers by the river for over one hundred years. In some places, the warnings couldn’t be issued fast enough, or were missing all together. Upstream it had rained an improbable five to ten inches in a matter of hours. Forecasters said the odds of that much rain in one day should have been around one-tenth of a percent. And yet here we are.

Bystanders described the horror and their own helplessness at hearing the screams of people being washed away and yet because of the darkness of the night and the volume of the river, they could do nothing. Even trained rescuers who mobilized mid flashflood couldn’t save everyone, despite pulling off over 200 river rescues in the night.

The New York Times noted that flash flood probabilities are worked out by NOAA, which of course is one of the many organizations that has seen huge cuts in personnel from the current regime. Fewer people working means it’s harder for them to stay on top of forecasting and watching the big storms which are ever more frequent and violent.

Here in Tennessee we’ve been subjected to over six months of tornado warnings, something that has increased exponentially in the twenty years I’ve been here. Tornado concerns used to be isolated to a few big storms during March and April. This year we had watches and warnings from December through June.

The literal flooding in Texas came the day after the horrendous bill passed the house, a bill that will strip away resources from people who are already hanging on by a thread and now many of whom will lose access to health insurance and food aid. In addition, this bill walked back many measures addressing this ever-worsening climate crisis. That has to feel like a whole different kind of flood, rushing towards our most vulnerable.

And the news cycle feels like rounds of flash-floods over and over again. I see friends withdrawing into themselves feeling the despair of it all: swept away by the flood of information.

But withdrawing is never the answer. Action and connection is. Reaching out to each other in the midst of literal and virtual floods is the key to not just surviving, but to overcoming together. I get the horror of it all and I too feel the drag downwards where it seems as though sinking into internal darkness is the only route we have left. In these times, I call a friend. I make a lunch date. I attend a protest, adding my voice to the many because each voice added makes a difference. I march in the Pride Parade with my church and celebrate with 150,000 people lining the Nashville streets in what I believe was the best attended parade and festival to date. Our joy and communion rose to cover the city.

A friend of mine who hadn’t marched in the parade before expressed concern about counter protesters. “I doubt they’ll come,” I said. “They’re bullies. They don’t turn out when there’s this many of us.” And I was right. Queer joy was on display at every turn and not a single naysayer or misguided guy with a sandwich board was in evidence. They’d been swept away by a different kind of flood: a flood of joy.

Existing in this world and caring about your neighbor has always been complicated. It has always meant living in the tension between joy and pain: knowing that experiencing joy and grace and communion is essential to dealing with the pain and the horrors and the losses. It has always been both, and I suspect it will continue this way for as long as there are humans trying to figure out life on our little blue and green marble.

Support relief efforts sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas here.