Hot enough for you?

Saturday. Sofa. Coffee.

I woke up early this morning and stumbled into the kitchen to put on the coffee. But there was no coffee. So I jumped in the Prius to go get some. The weather seems eager to make a statement here in the South this year. The rare white Christmas we enjoyed in December was a pleasant foreshadowing of unusual and not so pleasant things to come. Snowstorms came in January and shut us down for a week or two. Then shortly after the threat of winter weather was safely behind us the obscene display of power and destruction of tornadoes rolled over us like a giant bush hog. Now the oppressive heat of July and August arrived unfashionably early in the last week of May and like unwelcome company seems prepared to stay too long.

But, if you get up early enough, you can catch a few pleasant moments outside. The air is still but almost cool as the sun peeks above the eastern horizon. It doesn't last long, but in that moment it is perfect. It happens almost every day even during a heat wave. You just have to get up and out earlier than usual to find it.

We talk about the weather a lot, even when it is not so extreme. We write songs about it. We greet people with short weather bulletins, "Hot enough for you?"

The weather seems to make us more human. Or humane. We offer extraordinary, even sacrificial help to neighbors after tornadoes. We take dangerous trips through the snow to make sure folks are okay and have heat or food. We take fans to the elderly and sick during heat waves. And it makes us feel really good.

What is it about weather that brings out the best in us?

It is something we all understand because we all experience it. None of us escape it. No conversation or explanation or analysis is required to know the effects of extreme weather nor the problems it causes. The weather is no respecter of persons.

It rains on the just and the unjust. That covers all of us.

In my recent rant about the new Alabama immigration bill I complained about the severity of the legislation in the treatment of other human beings. But even this draconian legislation includes a provision that would allow emergency responders to assist illegal immigrants during disasters.

The hardships created by weather brings out the best in us because we all understand it. We all experience it. And we don't believe that anyone hurt by the weather has done anything to deserve it.

There is a lot of disagreement about our societal problems and how to address them.

We don't know the answers.

But maybe we could start to find better ones if we behaved like we did in the face of a natural disaster. When the tornadoes hit we had to go and see for ourselves to really understand. We had to sit on the curb and look into the faces of people still in shock and help them sift through the rubble to look for pieces of their lives that might still be salvaged. We desperately needed to figure out how best to help. The answer quickly became obvious. We had to go and ask what was needed. There was no substitute for that conversation.

We cannot do that with our other challenges by building more walls of separation. We can only do that by getting out and being with each other, getting to know each other, even those, especially those, that we believe are not like us, whatever the issue.

Because no matter how formidable the problem seems, how oppressive, there are always good moments to be found, even among the most heated battles.

It requires effort.

Like getting up and getting out a little earlier than usual.

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