I drove about an hour south last night, to meet my pastor brother from Iowa for supper. In the course of the conversation I discovered, to my surprise, that he’d been heavily involved in flood cleanup the last few days. And he hadn’t been going down to Iowa City or Cedar Falls, but to one of the nearest towns, where many of his parishioners live.

Its whole business district was under water. Devastating losses (though thankfully no deaths), and nobody had flood insurance, because historically the water has never come anywhere near this high. He said they’d all been out piling sandbags the night before the crest, but they might as well have stayed home and watched TV, because the river topped the bags by several feet.

His church has “adopted” a woman who’d recently moved to town, apparently because of low real estate costs, and bought a nice house “by the river.” She’d lost almost everything, and had no friends or family in the area.

I was ashamed I hadn’t called to check how they were doing when I heard about the flooding. When I heard of the massive earthquake in China (where his daughter is now), I called right away to find out if they’d heard anything (she wasn’t in any danger).

I guess that because I knew he himself doesn’t live near water, and because the disaster was “around these parts” rather than “way off in foreign lands,” I just assumed nothing bad could happen.

It’s a form of xenophobia, I suppose, to figure bad stuff only happens far away. Wishful thinking, too.