Prayer Circle: Climate Grief
prayers for the suffering earth.
Thanks for taking the time to open this email! If you somehow were sent it and you haven’t subscribed, I’d love to have you on the email list—I try to not be annoying and then of course you can always tell me I’m annoying and unsubscribe any time you want. In any case, if you enjoy this post, giving it a ♡ and/or commenting is helpful. It tells Substack I’m worth reading and it tells me what you think about my writing (especially if you comment and tell me what you think about my writing).
Hello friend,
Climate grief is not a new feeling. That sensation of despair, of fear that the world might swallow you up, wash you away, or burn you into dust and ash. This is the everyday experience for people all over the country, now looking over their shoulder and expecting to see disaster. It’s not new to the rest of the world, not new to the global majority, the people who mostly live around and south of the equator and know the impacts of increased frequency and severity of major weather events without the benefits that most highly industrialized nations have.
Growing up in Kerrville, we expected floods. We expected the occasional deep freeze. Early summer storms that could shake the dead branches off a tree. Still, I remember at some point realizing that the place I lived was, overall, pretty safe. It must have been some time after I purchased a book from the Scholastic book fair called Kids’ Survival Handbook.
Reading about how to survive an avalanche (rotate your head to make space in the snow and spit to see which way is up), a puma (get as big as possible, make lots of noise), being stranded in a desert (capture any condensation you can and stay out of the sun), or getting thrown overboard in tropical waters (put your shoes on your feet before grabbing onto muscle-covered pylons and punch sharks in the nose and eyes), I became keenly aware that I lived in a pretty safe place. At that point, following the instruction “turn around, don’t drown” was enough to protect you from the one natural disaster we expected to face, the flash flood. That’s not the case any more.
One of the challenges of writing about a tragedy you were not present for is that you don’t really belong there. You cannot write your way into it, or toward it, any easier than one can truly write their way out of tragedy. And as I’ve been taking notes on what I might say, on how I feel, it’s felt at points profane to even try. It feels violating of the intimacy of that horror, the intimacy of those who wished to be on my side of the metaphorical river, the side that did not overflow, the side from where we all watched, horrified, but safe.
So I write about this tragedy from exactly where I am. What do I mean by that? I mean that I did not want to have to leave that place, but I did have to leave it. I would like to feel more capable of returning to visit, but I do not. I love my new home in Philadelphia and I’m getting to know what grows around here, what makes up the land, and where the water is. I am happy, but it wasn’t an uncomplicated move. It’s not uncomplicated that I feel so distant from that first home now, far more distant than the 1,800 miles that separate us.
I am not repulsed by Texas. I love the nature there. I love its climate. I love to sweat and bake in the sun. I love how the light moves through branches of Live Oaks and Ashe Junipers. I even love the clouds of pollen that burst out from those juniper trees come spring and how their bark tears off in strips to be used in bird nests. I love swimming in the headwaters of the Guadalupe, the creeks that split off and disappear in the brush, and in the spring-fed pools that used to be so much more common. I miss those hills made of limestone and caliche. I miss when it felt like somewhere kids came from other places, cities far away, to swim and run and get bit by fire ants and mosquitos. I miss when it was just a place to play and experience something good.
It’ll be a lot of those things again. We know people are resilient and we know that resilience and nostalgia can get us back on track after disaster with surprising efficiency. What I fear is that getting back on track is nowhere near good enough to save that place. What I fear is that Kerr County is at the mercy of much bigger powers that are not interested in a good life for Kerr County. These powers are only interested, I fear, in returning short-term value to their small circle of shareholders. You can substitute your own Kerr County here, your own small, special place that certain men use as a chip to wager in a political game.
Seeing Donald Trump speak in my hometown is nauseating. Seeing Greg Abbott speak in my hometown is nauseating. Seeing Kristi Noem speak in my hometown is nauseating. Seeing people who every day support actions and policies making this kind of climate disaster possible speak in my hometown is nauseating. It’s sick that they are determined to cut funding to all the kinds of support that is most needed right in this moment.
To put some of the politics of that flood bluntly: there were roughly 6,200 Medicaid enrollees in Kerr County in FY 2024. That’s about 11.7% of the county. I can’t be sure off my basic review of the data on the Medicaid website, but when you consider the neighborhoods most decimated by this flood, the trailers and mobile homes turned into wet piles of muck, I think one can assume there is a significant overlap between these Medicaid enrollees and those most impacted by flood damage. These national leaders speaking in my hometown do not believe in Medicaid. They hope to see more people die of easily preventable deaths. They are not interested in us.
The place I grew up does not require that people be hateful, racist, homophobic, far-right Christian fanatics. That myth is what causes people all over the country to offer wry shrugs when disasters like this hit, because they think, “Well, it’s what they voted for…” In reality, there are kind, caring, decent, unbothered people there. The kind of people who, given the chance and the exposure to different ways of thinking are happy to listen, to share, and to help. So many of them don’t get a chance though, because the men in power prefer the hateful, racist, homophobic, far-right Christian fanatics. Much better for the men in power when public schools are underfunded, telecoms are a commodity instead of a public utility, and healthcare is a luxury good.
The decisions that that led to this tragedy, to the incomprehensible loss of all these lives, were made decades ago. Creating climate change wasn’t a new idea dreamed up in Project 2025, it was something dreamed up as early as Gingrich’s policies in Contract with America, in the 90s and earlier. We can’t blame Donald Trump’s Republican Party for this specific disaster, but we can expect the decisions they are making now will be to blame for disasters to come. These people and the people who do not stand up to them are to blame for the destruction of the world we once knew. They are to blame for the loss of those things we don’t yet know will be lost. They are to blame for valuing profit over life.
No, climate grief is not a new feeling. Climate grief, of course, is just grief, the feeling that loss leaves behind.
Yours in grief,
Fred
One kind of prayer is a conversation with God. We might talk with God about the families who suffered, the lives lost. We might sit and try to feel what that loss is and to understand its significance. May that conversation move us to greater commitment and courage to change this world for the better.
Another kind of prayer is action. I am giving funds to support the recovery process in Kerrville, understanding they are at the beginning of a long and difficult road.
You can donate to help the flood relief efforts in Kerrville in a couple ways that I know of:
Donate to the mutual aid fund that has been set up here. I like to donate where cash and resources are going to people as quickly as possible and I’m optimistic that this group will help with that.
Look into the Community Foundation, a non-profit organization that’s been active in Kerrville as long as I can remember. If this kind of organization is more your style, all good. Give what you can.
Thank you again for reading. Feel free to respond in the comments, in an email reply, or by telepathy, if you can do that.