LEAVE YOUR COCOON THIS WINTER

 

By Bill Dunn

 

It is now mid-summer and the drastic increase in the price of oil has altered the way people live their lives. For example, many vacation plans were cancelled, with the money diverted to pay for higher food prices and the gasoline needed to commute to work.

 

As we sit in our homes, sweating in the heat and lamenting that we couldn’t afford to vacation at the shore this year, it would be a good idea to start thinking about a major crisis we are likely to face this winter.

 

Right now, when gasoline costs between $4 and $5 per gallon, senior citizens and other folks who do not commute to work each day, can choose not to drive (or at least drastically reduce their driving). But when the temperature plunges, as it surely will in about four months, these same people can’t choose not to heat their homes.

 

A few years ago it cost about $250 to fill the heating oil tank in the average home. Right now it costs over $1,200. Who knows what it will cost this fall. By the time many tanks start running dry around Christmas, we face the very real possibility of seeing regular news stories about senior citizens found frozen to death in their homes.

 

Many people are of the opinion that the government surely will not let that happen. Won’t our noble leaders at the federal and state levels provide the assistance needed to keep folks from freezing to death? Well, for the past four decades government officials have indeed been promising to take care of all our needs. All we have to do in return is keep voting them back into office and keep paying ever-increasing taxes. But as the citizens of New Orleans discovered, during a crisis the government is about as competent as Brittney Spears at the National Spelling Bee finals.

 

Bloated bureaucracies, by definition, are inefficient and slow to react. Any special measures the government might take to assist senior citizens this winter will probably get checks into their hands next May—just in time to purchase flowers for their graves.

 

In a situation like this, the institutions that have proven to be the most effective and efficient must be mobilized: families, neighborhoods, and churches.

 

It’s not too early to begin planning. Make a list of people you know who might be at risk. Start talking about it now with your elderly parents and neighbors. Set aside money each week to be used as donations or emergency oil purchases. Think of what needs to be done to transform your home into a makeshift temporary shelter.

 

And most difficult of all, start rehearsing how you will convince dear old Nana and Pop-Pop to leave their frigid home and stay with you for a few days. You know they will stubbornly refuse at first, but an uncomfortable conversation will be much more preferable to the alternative: discovering a new and gruesome definition of the word “Popsicle.”

 

Later this year we just might be forced to care for each other in ways that haven’t been necessary since the Great Depression. We just might have to confront what it truly means to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19).

 

Four decades of governmental false promises to take care of people have produced a rather ugly side effect: during that same time period Americans have become extremely self-absorbed. We live in our little cocoons of comfort and can’t be bothered by other people’s problems. (Why should we bother? Didn’t the politicians promise to take care of everyone?)

 

The big question this winter will be whether we have the courage and compassion to come out of our cocoons and lend a hand during a time of crisis.