How do you like your Apocalypse—with fire, water, pestilence, or war?  In Genesis, after the Flood, G-d promised Noah that He wouldn’t destroy creation again with water. In Peter, G-d extended and amended the remark and promised, “The Fire Next Time.” Well, here in Southern California, there is no flood, nor very much water—little for agriculture, less for drinking and we’re running out of water with which to put out our fires. So it’s “Burn Baby Burn” in these charred parts.

So far my home is unaffected, but I’m not. I am for, I hope only a brief while, a fire refugee. I don’t take my status as a great inconvenience, certainly not compared with people who have lost their homes to the fires or people who have fled their homelands because of political fires. Still, a refugee is a refugee, just as in WWII some were in horrible camps and others were pampered,

living ironically in or near the now-smoldering Pacific Palisades. To name but a few psychically hurting but physically comfortable European exiles: Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and Billy Wilder.

I am certainly pampered and easily found comfortable refuge. Many are not so fortunate. Still, there is trauma in leaving home—a home with treasured memories and objects, often insignificant to others but holders of uniquely personal memories—and knowing they might be turned to ashes.

Yes, that’s an uncomfortable metaphor for all of us. We are each a treasury of experiences and memories, and as they say in Africa, “When an old person dies, a whole library is burned to the ground.” Of course, a physical souvenir is not of the same worth as a human life, but we imbue physical objects with memories and meaning. Their value isn’t intrinsic but up-loaded from our hearts.

We all know that objects can carry meaning greater than their apparent value. A soldier may die to pick up a flag. A person could perish rushing into a burning building to save a photograph or some inherited object without apparent value to a stranger.

When I packed my Go-Bag on Thursday, I started with necessities e.g. meds, socks, underwear, passport, and some cash. Then I thought of what to save. I didn’t make any of my quick and stressed choices by monetary value. Some valuable art remained on the walls (where I hope to find them when I return.) My choices were projections of my heart and not my wallet. I took a favorite photo of my then-young mother,  singing to me as I gazed at her from my crib, as well as our wedding album and those of our kids, along with three irreplaceable pictures of my wife’s ancestors, some of whom were slaughtered in the far worse fires of the Holocaust.

Once physically settled in my temporary refuge, though feeling unsettled, I did what a modern person of my generation does and took to Facebook. I marked myself “Safe but Anxious.”  Then the blessings began to flow. Almost instantly I began to receive thoughts of concern for my situation, relief that I was safe, wishes of love, and prayers for my continued safety. I read endless offers of refuge manifest as invitations to stay with people—some family, some friends, and some only casual acquaintances.

To some extent, though I didn’t take any of these invitations lightly or for granted, I was most moved by the thoughts, prayers, and invitations of many of the far-flung readers of my columns. Most moving to me were invitations from readers who have been consistent, and sometimes adversarial (even hostile) critics of my thinking and politics. I have begun to believe that they hated my writings and not me. This is an important and heartening distinction, one we’ll need with our often loud, angry, and partisan divisions.

I think that my friends see my virtues and tolerate my flaws while some of my adversaries see my flaws and believe that they don’t completely erase all of my virtues. There is a generosity of spirit that I find inspirational. This gives me hope for all of us.

I have an article of faith that I share with Anne Frank. She wrote on July 15, 1944, “I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Yes, I know that it takes only a few people to kill an Anne Frank and to poison our faith in humanity. The perils posed by evil are real and must be opposed, but mere disagreement isn’t evil. Passionate opposing opinions do not mean that those who hold them are irredeemably lost and somehow not deserving of consideration, caring, and being held, helped, and comforted in times of distress. We may consign ideas to the flames but not human beings.

Yes, classically, the gods were critical when Prometheus brought down fire from the heavens and gave it to humans. The gods rightly wondered if we were up to the job of tending the flame and trying to make sure that its heat did not burn us but instead warmed us and that its light did not blind us but instead illuminated our hearts and our world. Those fears of the gods are still germane, but I would like to believe that we can become worthy and responsible nurturers of the sacred but tamed fire.

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