Let’s help rekindle the light in Mayfield and let’s keep helping all year long

Prayers, prayers, prayers...and ACTION. The morning after the night the light went out in Mayfield, we mourn alike. Compassion, anguish, a desire to fix things quickly, grieve the dead, and help the survivors. Utter and complete destruction and devastation hit Kentucky and surrounding states. This candle factory —The symbol of light during this Advent season — crushed. Hundreds of lives lost, many more injured. Whole towns demolished. No power for many thousands of souls, with temperatures dropping to below freezing by nightfall. All this during the Holy Season, i.e. the “Holidays.”

“Merry Christmas/Happy Holiday” cheers seem awkward in the face of such a catastrophe. This could have happened to any of us, sitting comfortably in a heated home, fireplace roaring, tinsel and garland mantle, stockings hung with care, an angel-topped tree with a hundred twinkling lights warming our cottage corner.

Then again, maybe this hits us harder right now because it is so close to home or involves so many casualties, all right before Christmas. Regardless, we have compassion. We care, and we share our care with all around us. Any walls once dividing us melt away in the hearth of goodwill.

But why need we wait? We can always don our higher nature. Every day of every year tragedy befalls someone somewhere. If it was someone close to us, we’d feel the same as we do now, full of compassion and goodwill. By extending that, we could breach divides and help one another. Assume each person we meet is suffering their own personal tornado, and our favor will naturally flow.

Maelstroms remind us that we are the same. We are all good people. We all care. There are no Democrats, there are no Republicans, there is just us—human beings sharing the highest human values, divinely inspired, in the spirit of goodwill.

Thankfully, most of us are safe. But in the blink of an eye that could change. Hark Jesus and honor our prince of peace. In a world where we can be anything, be kind. To all, all the time. Sure, we’re only human, we’ll mess up. But if we but recall, repent, and start again, that’ll be good enough. Take the high road, turn the other cheek, forgive little stings and refuse to give them, be the change we want to see. Let us each, to echo Dickens, be as good a person as any good town or city in the world knew.

So yes, prayers, prayers, prayers, and action. We are well-equipped. At home and across the globe let us recall our mission to at all times and in all places bring “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Humanity.”

And let THAT be the light mother nature tried to extinguish on a mid-December night in Mayfield.

Richard Dawahare is a Lexington attorney.

This story was originally published December 11, 2021 at 2:28 PM.