David McElroy

Even when I was a child, my Aunt Bessie seemed impossibly old.

She was actually my great aunt, but I knew her better than either of my actual aunts. After we moved to Jasper, Ala., so my father could take care of his aging parents, I spent a lot of time at her house. Her husband, Uncle Larkin, had been sick and somewhat cranky all my life, so I spent far more time with her than with him.

Aunt Bessie seemed like the cheapest woman on Earth. She shopped at stores that sold goods with some sort of flaw, because she said it was the only way to get a bargain. She ate the cheapest cuts of meat imaginable. She was incredibly frugal.

Most of all, though, she almost never threw anything away. It didn’t matter whether it was a rubber band or a scrap of fabric or a piece of string. She would store such junk away and say quietly, “I might need it someday.”

Aunt Bessie was only 24 years old when the Great Depression started, but it left an imprint on her which I never understood — and I fear we’re all about to learn what fear taught her.

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The world has changed since Love & Hope started on Jan. 1, in ways that none of us expected. I’ve tried to adjust this show to the present reality, but the concept isn’t really adequate to cover what’s going on.

I’ll have one more episode after today, but that will be the end of Season 1. I’ll let you know what’s coming after that when I know. The four-minute update below will explain a bit more.

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When my body needs fuel, I experience a sensation I call hunger. When my body is becoming dehydrated, I feel something we call thirst.

And when my soul needs authentic human connection, I experience something — a hunger, a hurt, a passion — which doesn’t really have a name.

Sometimes we call it loneliness, but it’s more than that. It’s an emptiness. It’s emotional. It’s intellectual. It’s spiritual. And it’s physical.

This inner yearning is the force which has allowed the human race to survive for so long. The writer of the Hebrew book of Genesis tells us that God looked at the world he had made and at the man he had made, then said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Even thousands of years ago, the wise men who wrote such books knew that a man and a woman needed one another. And something inside us won’t leave us alone until we go back to our personal origins — and finally get that right.

In a time of crisis — such as today — I feel this hunger as never before.

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