Reflections from the Center

For those folks who wish to lord it over the unrighteous whose lives happened to be in the path of Hurricane Katrina I offer this reflection from a recent visit to Long Beach, MS. I hope it isn't yet a crime or a sin to be poor because if it is we are all one stout wind away from sinfully criminal behavior.

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Vignette – It’s Sunday night. A Sunday night like so many other Sunday nights headed North from the Gulf. The sun was at that inconvenient angle just below the sun visor because it was late afternoon. It was really annoying on this two lane section of Hwy. 45 because fatigue had set in. Lots of tired Sunday nights have been spent on this road coming back from a rushed three day adventure on our coast. Years worth of walks on the sand beach with the sounds of cars roaring just over there - leaving at the last minute possible to get up before dark. The road always got small and rough right about here. This night is different. Instead of memories of the seafood dinner overlooking the shore, tonight the faces fill the mind, hundreds of faces milling past with the same intense grim look. Hunting searching, looking for help, picking through our scraps the faces search for some little piece that will cover the need and bring some rest. Is it a shirt, a skirt, a can of tuna, food for the dog or a bear for the youngest daughter that will catch the eye? Or will someone else get there just ahead of them, head them off at the pass, and take the item that would quench their thirst, however temporary the quench. Katrina took their lives. Well not their lives exactly, though she may have taken their friend or their neighbor or their mom. She took everything, mercilessly and they have come here seeking mercy. They receive maybe enough, maybe too much of some things and not enough of others. Life is going on but it is so out of balance. The job, its gone and the house is there but trashed. The delicate arrangements that balanced life have been drowned in a rude, thoughtless wave that washed them over like the waves which dismembered the carefully sculpted castles of sand fashioned on those other better Sundays. Those Sundays seem now so long ago. Waves of faces, faces which are determined, scared, lost, dire and hopeful all at once now break on those shores. On to the next table, on to the next box, fill out the forms, trudge from center to center hoping to find…. But I can go home. I can go back up to my comfy clean water house way up North. The friends I went to visit so often each time over these last years, those folks must stay there – on to the next table, on to the next box, fill out the forms, trudge from center to center hoping to find….

A Lost City - No it's bigger than that.

I hear a word in the background (and some of the foreground) in the text below [Scroll down to Tommy McGlothlin's thoughts about New Orleans]. Requiem. Maybe we don't have to hold that mass just yet. I have heard folks actually say in a public place this week that we as a country have failed those on the lowest end of the economic scale, or in New Orleans reference, the lower end of the continental scale. I heard in those comments and in Tommy's the glimmer of what I used to recognize as America's conscience. In our lifetime America had developed a conscience perhaps for the first or second time in the last century. However, after the 60's and 70's it was just too much trouble to care any more. Reagan made people feel it was OK somehow to not care for those folks who were not either CEO's, movers or shakers.

New Orleans was a place where folks could be movers if they wanted to or they could just be themselves and not be judged poorly for it. Maybe the spotlight got shined on the lack of caring just enough this week that we can see who we really are as Americans. If we care, the decision to repair New Orleans is easy - a Big Easy. I have no doubt that we will rebuild and repopulate New Orleans. It will change like all things change as the result of calamity but I don't believe for a minute that anyone would seriously propose abandoning the ground. I mean this is the country that still thinks it was a good idea to invade Iraq. The idea of abandonment of untenable ground does not come easy to us. Is the city in a goofy and irresponsible location - sure - what's your point? It's there. It has been and as long as there is a river running by it and an ocean just over there, there will be a New Orleans.

It's time. It's time to care about those who have "less than us" (and us is a mighty hard thing to define). It's time to roll up our sleeves and not only help New Orleans but help those who cannot see or comprehend that the folks who stayed in the Hurricane zone are not defectives and degenerates who are so unrighteous who "deserve what they got." Rather, the folks who were there ain't got much and know that if they didn't protect it they wouldn't have that. It should be obvious now that what they knew was true was true - no one cared about the folks who could not load up the big ol' SUV and skedaddle. New Orleans experience shows us that as a country we don't give a rats toenails about poor folks and don't have a clue what motivates or de-motivates them. America does not care to see the rot in it's foundation. It just wants to blame someone else and complain when the house falls down. I have read allot about "waking up" to the threat from terrorists. Who terrorized Americans this week - our own government caused more suffering than those who would "intentionally" harm us. It showed who and what it cared about and who it did not. I hope that God blesses America - with the knowledge of its hardened heart and extols the virtue of compassion so that we might return to a time of conscience. Perhaps the lesson of New Orleans will spark our still small voice to be the voice of fairness and change.

Hey, it COULD happen.
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A Lost City
Tommy McGlothlin

Though I am not a true native of the city of New Orleans, I consider myself an Orleanian to the very core. New Orleans defined me. New Orleans shaped me. New Orleans gave me my deep sense of history, pride of place, respect for diversity, love of human joy and celebration, and sense of community. I lived in New Orleans during my formative years, from shortly after my birth to shortly after my 18th birthday. I was educated in her schools and worshipped in her churches. Her citizens were my friends and neighbors, as they still are today. It is as much “home” to me, even now, than is the city in which I live today. I am a son of New Orleans and proudly so.

There was no other city in the entire world like New Orleans. Her history permeated every corner of the city. When you walked the streets of the Vieux Carre, the French Quarter, you were aware of the spirits of people who had walked those same streets three centuries before. She was a city that did not fear those spirits. Rather, she embraced them as her own kin, loved ones never really lost, gently reminding her and her children of where they had been and where they should go.

New Orleans was not a stranger to death and disaster. In the 19th century, the stench of death had come over the city many times in the form of hurricanes, floods, disease, and war. During the 20th century, her population was reduced to poverty and despair during the Great Depression and many of her sons and daughters endured the policies of the segregated South. And yet in spite of these plagues, the people of New Orleans rejoiced at life, sang songs of hope, laughed in the face of adversity, and pressed on for a better life in an environment that did everything in its power to stop it. Orleanians dared you to give them a reason – any reason – to have a party. They were uniquely aware that reasons to celebrate life could be found anywhere. Orleanians knew how to celebrate in spite of adversity, rejoice in spite of dispair, laugh in spite of tears. In the French language of their forefathers, this ability is called Joie de vivre, the joy of life, and it gave them the only reason they needed to carry on.

And though she celebrated life so enthusiastically, New Orleans was silently suffering from a tumor growing deep within her. She was aware of this tumor, yes, but she tried to ignore it, hoping that it would go away if she could just love life enough. This tumor was human greed. it often caused secondary symptoms throughout the years, such as poverty, injustice, and indifference. Yet in her zeal for life and her desire to nurture her sons and daughters, she was able to shake off these secondary infections and endure. But when New Orleans’ surrounding environment brought her to her knees, the primary infection erupted. She had no other option but to send her children out of her house in hopes of saving them. And so Orleanians have spread out across the country, émigrés in their own nation, orphans seeking shelter in the homes of neighbors.

The city now lies mortally wounded, but she can be saved. Some have looked over her wounded body and given up on her, swearing that she is not worth saving. Some of her own citizens have given up on her too, bitter that she abandoned them in their time of need, disgusted that she ignored the tumor to the point that she could no longer sustain them when they needed her most. In spite of those who would be willing to let her die, the nation owes New Orleans life. The contributions of the city to the life, history, and culture of America are too great to mention in mere passing. Volumes of books can – and have – been written on this subject. But before America can pull New Orleans out of the waters in which she drowns, it too must deal with the same tumor that has brought down New Orleans. Few cities in America are free from the disease. What America must realize is that what brought down New Orleans can bring down every city in the country. With the same disease festering inside their own bodies, the cities of America are all vunerable if environmental forces knock them down. Eventually, one way or another, the American nation must recognize and treat the same disease from which New Orleans suffered. The consequences have already been seen in the crisis in New Orleans. You see, the same disease that brought down New Orleans has prevented America from coming to her aid in a timely and productive manner. Just as New Orleans forced her own children out, an ill America left an ill New Orleans to fend for herself. The disease is genetic.

New Orleans can be saved. But the extent to which America can save the city of New Orleans depends largely on how ill the nation is itself. In the meantime, I grieve with my brothers and sisters from New Orleans. I feel lost with them. Though I have a home, and neighors and friends to which to turn, in my heart I am wandering with them. After all, these are the same peope with whom I grew up and with whom I learned to love life in the way that ony New Olreans could teach them. I grieve for our city and I grieve for our nation. And I give thanks for the neighbors who have taken in the lost sons and daughters of la Nouvelle-Orléans