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the Rev. Beth Miller
December 18, 2005
[UU Church of the Monterey Peninsula – Carmel, California]
How can I begin to describe to you Louisiana and Mississippi after Katrina and Rita? Where to begin? What can I tell you that will give you a sense of it, but also be more than just descriptive? I’ve been struggling all week with what to say.
For those of you who are visitors and have no idea what I’m talking about, this congregation “loaned” me to a small Unitarian Universalist congregation in Lacombe, LA for three weeks so that their pastor could get a much needed break. I returned last Monday night.
I think I want to start at the end instead of the beginning. The last thing I did with the congregation I was serving was to attend the annual Choir Christmas Party on Sunday night. This was after conducting the morning service and preparing the lentil soup lunch for the whole congregation and all the hugs and tearful goodbyes. It was after spending all day Saturday with the Board and other lay leaders and five UUs there representing their partner churches working together to figure out what the congregation’s priorities are and how others might be of help. It was after facilitating a lengthy and intense discussion of a conflict for members of the First UU Church of New Orleans on Friday evening. It was after three weeks of listening to stories: stories of the storm, stories of conflict and pain, stories of survival and trying to rebuild lives in a very hard time.
When I arrived at the Choir Christmas Party, I was tired. I was leaving the next day and I hadn’t packed. I only went because I couldn’t remember the names of the two women who were picking me up for the party, so I couldn’t call to say I was too tired to go. It was hard to mingle and make conversation, to enjoy the food and drink. I felt done and done in. I just wanted to curl up by myself with a book or the last of the rental movies I had gotten at Blockbuster.
But then people finished eating and we gathered around to sing. First we sang Christmas Carols and I felt my spirits begin to lift. Then one of the guys got out his guitar and we did a few numbers he knew and my energy began to revive. And then a couple of us noticed a 60s songbook on the piano and there was no stopping us.
We began singing those ridiculous old songs, the ones that make you want to throw up now, like he’s a rebel and he’ll never, ever, be any good, and Johnny Angel, how I love him... Songs of the Chantrels, Sonny and Cher, even Dolly Parton. It was amazing how many of the words we could find in the recesses of our minds.
One woman, whose house had been destroyed, sang out the loudest, and I knew that ultimately, even though it would be a long time, she would be okay. And with her, most of the others.
In that moment, I understood what Jazz Funerals mean to New Orleans. I understood why it is important to hold Mardi Gras and the Jazz Festival this coming year, even though doing so is controversial in light of so many pressing needs.
Rabindranath Tagore wrote: Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
For the people of New Orleans and the North Shore and the Gulf Coast, the dawn is still dark. There is still so much chaos, so much dislocation, such trials to face. Normal is forever gone and the new normal is yet to be. And yet, people can still sing. Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
I arrived on Monday night, the 21 st of November. My plane landed at Gulfport, MS, about an hour from Lacombe, LA. I picked up my rental car and followed the directions Mapquest had given me. In the dark, I saw no signs of destruction. Everything seemed normal. Cars proceeded along the Interstate, the radio played as radios do, and all seemed well enough.
The North Shore Unitarian Universalist congregation is located in Lacombe, LA. Lacombe is one of several small towns lined up along I-12 running East and West along the North Shore of Lake Ponchartrain. These little towns have their own history, but since the causeway across the lake was built in 1969, the area has also become home for many people who commute to New Orleans daily, or did before the storm. This causeway, by the way, is the longest bridge in the U.S. that is completely over water - 23 miles long. They are still working on repairing it, but one span is open and traffic is moving both in and out of the city.
I had intentionally NOT developed expectations. I had tried not to think about what being there might be like. I had read a couple of articles on dealing with crisis situations to refreshed myself about the kinds of stress people might be experiencing, but I really wanted to arrive with my mind and heart as open and uncluttered with expectations or with things I thought I knew about the people and the situation as I could.
Nothing in my experience prepared me for the kind of devastation and displacement I witnessed. Those of you who have served in war or other situations of mass destruction will understand what I mean. Words cannot adequately describe it, but I have to try.
The area right around Lacombe isn’t too bad. The church roof was badly damaged, but a crew of UUs from New England came down and got it fixed quite soon. Many large trees on the property came down and the Feng Shui garden that had been lovingly designed and planted was damaged. It is now more of a sun garden than the shade garden it had been. Some of the neighborhoods where the members live were hard hit and others missed altogether. Some homes were completely destroyed, some had minor damage, and other were not touched at all.
In the first couple of days, driving around on my own, I was amazed at the number of tree still lying around and the amount of debris - house parts, furniture, refrigerators, abandoned cars, carpeting, and countless other kinds of junk - still lining the roadways. I saw FEMA blue roofs in many neighborhoods. FEMA blue roofs are these plastic tarps that FEMA brings in and helps get up on the roofs of the homes that have been damaged so that water doesn’t make things worse when it rains. Three and a half month after the storms and there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of FEMA blue roofs throughout the region.
On Wednesday a member of the congregation named Julie took me on a tour of the hard hit areas of Lake Ponchartrain and the Gulf Coast. Julie works for the National Oceanographic Administration and commutes this route into MS everyday. Many of her friends and co-workers live in these areas. It was staggering. Whole communities blown away. Hundreds of thousands of trees down. Boats miles from water, blown ashore by the storm. Countless FEMA trailers or private campers in the driveways of unlivable homes, some nothing but foundations. Billboard signs blown over. Business gone. And workers everywhere, trying to put things back together again.
There are countless pick-up trucks from all over the country throughout the region. Men like the ones we see ads for in the Coast Weekly - handy man, light hauling, jack of all trades - that sort of thing. Guys from all over the country are there with signs in the windows of their trucks: “house gutting,” “stump removal,” “roofs repaired.” Guys looking to pick up work. And thank God they are there. There is more work than enough work to go around. Some of them are probably rip off artists, but most are honest working men just going where the work is to try to make a living and help out at the same time.
It is in these towns I saw along the lake front and gulf coast that the North Shore Unitarian Universalists live. They are a small congregation of probably about 85 members before the storm. About 20% of their members are just gone. Countless people throughout the region, people who lost both homes and jobs, people too elderly or infirm to cope with the idea of rebuilding, people of all kinds and for all kinds of reasons, have left the area. Of the 65 or so members left, probably 2/3 had damage to their homes. Some of their homes were completely destroyed. Some are living in rental space. Others in FEMA trailers on their property. Some are in other people’s homes. And one man is living in his severely damaged house, still without water or electricity, as he tried to repair the damage. He says he is used to camping.
Remember, it has been nearly four months since Hurricane Katrina hit the region. And while FEMA, the Red Cross, insurance companies, local municipalities and the federal government have been criticized for their lousy response times, and rightly so, I witnessed constant activity to try to get things cleaned up. But there is so much; so much to do. USA Today reported last week that Katrina and Rita had left 100 million cubic yards of debris in four states. That is incomprehensible. To break it down, 100 million cubic yards is enough to fill the Superdome 22 times over. Where to put it all is a national problem.
On Monday, a week after I had arrived, I went to visit the minister of First UU Church in New Orleans, Marta Valenti. Marta and her partner, Alison, had arrived in New Orleans two weeks before Katrina. They had moved in to a rented house and had just gotten everything unpacked. Marta hadn’t even conducted her first worship service with the congregation yet. Like everyone else who was able to get out, they evacuated. When they returned a few weeks later, they discovered their house destroyed along with everything in it.
Such loss was an all too typical story. Easier, actually, for those who didn’t own their houses. The renters don’t have to decide whether to rebuild. They don’t have to fight with insurance companies about what damage was wind (usually covered) and what damage was flood (usually not covered). Renters don’t have to wait for the local governments to decide what the new building standards will be in order to rebuild - or face the possibility of having to do it over again to be in compliance. But I digress.
Rev. Marta is a new minister. She served her first year in ministry as an Interim Associate Minister in Arlington, VA. She didn’t know her people and she didn’t know her way around the city, and here she was, homeless in the middle of a disaster zone. I am in awe of her spirit. No one would have blamed her for walking away after the storm instead of beginning this new ministry. I imagine she asks herself on many days why she didn’t just do that. But she has hung in there, doing an intense and amazing ministry in such a hard time.
It is at times like this that our congregational polity, which says that the congregation makes its own decisions and is its own highest authority, and our radical democratic way of organizing ourselves is really hard. The people of New Orleans are personally devastated. I will tell you about my tour of the city in a minute, but I can’t possibly convey to you the degree of stress and dislocation there. It is like I imagine a European city hard hit by bombs in WWII must have been. And these people, many in temporary homes, many without jobs, others working extended hours in critical jobs, have to make major decisions about the future of their church on top of everything else. First Unitarian Universalist, and the other UU congregation in the city, Community Church, have buildings that sat in toxic water for weeks. What to do? How to do it? When to do it? What help will be available? All of these monumental questions face these congregations of people who are personally stressed beyond what we can fathom. And it will all take so long. A Bishop with the answers and the funds probably sounds pretty good right now!
On Wednesday of that 2 nd week, I was taken on a tour of the city by two women who had each lived there and were long time residents of the area. One woman, Barbara, had a little house she had bought and renovated and was trying to sell. It was completely destroyed. And uninsured. And her job was gone, too. She’s an artist and lost much of her artwork.
The other woman, Emily, was an adjunct professor at Loyola College. Her job was completely gone. She had ridden out the storm in a hospital in New Orleans with her 19 year old son. He had been taken to the emergency room with a collapsed lung a few days before and had undergone surgery. He had a tube in his chest hooked up to a machine and was not able to leave. Emily stayed with him. They and others in the hospital watched the storm. From her son’s window, she saw the section of the roof of the Superdome blow off.
Everyone was moved into the hallways at one point. There was water coming in, even on the 8 th floor, from the power of the storm. The electricity went out, but generators kept the critical machines working. The elevator was out, and the air conditioning. It was late August in New Orleans - over 100 degrees some days. Food was limited and Emily, along with the doctors and nurses and other hospital staff and family members staying with patients, had to walk to the ground floor to get it.
Katrina hit on a Monday. On Thursday, they were told they had to leave the hospital. The flood waters from the broken levees were coming their way and they had to get out of the city before they were trapped inside. Emily’s son was off the machine and could travel by now. They were escorted in a convoy by the National Guard and told not to stop for anyone for any reason. Car-jacking was a very real possibility. They got out alright and went to Baton Rouge until it was permissible to return to their home on the North Shore.
So this was Emily, one of my guides, and Barbara, the other. We went over the causeway and through Metarie, a suburb just outside the city. Metarie was on the side of the levees that didn’t get flooded. Their damage was due to hurricane winds and rain. It was pretty extensive, but it is amazing how the immense destruction of this powerful hurricane is dwarfed by the damage of the broken levees.
We began our New Orleans tour in the lakeside region of New Orleans and continued through many neighborhoods throughout the city. We hear about the ninth ward and think everything else is up and running again. It isn’t. Far from it.
Mile after mile of flooded out homes. There is a brown ring that looks like a bathtub ring around each of the houses and businesses that shows how deep they were underwater. Four feet, six feet, some as much as twelve feet, these buildings sat in water and mud and sludge from the broken oil refineries and God knows what else for more than a week. Everything in the buildings sat in this stuff. The foundations and walls and floors electrical systems and plumbing soaked in this stuff.
Despite the constant effort for weeks and the millions of tons of debris already removed, there is debris everywhere. Thousands of home appliances and pieces of furniture sit along the roadways. Trees are still down everywhere. There is no electricity in many areas. The orange X on each house tells when it was inspected and by what group and how many dead bodies were found. They are still discovering bodies missed on initial inspection. Street signs are missing and stop lights are out. There is a 4-way stop protocol in place. Parts of the city are like a ghost town.
We went to the house where Emily’s son had lived. He had just begun at the University of New Orleans and had gotten an apartment off campus on the 2 nd floor of a two-flat house. The house, along with all the others in the whole neighborhood, was under water and is completely destroyed. A very heavy coating of mold grows on the walls. All the furniture and fixtures and household goods of all these houses are in the yards or on the curbs, unless they’ve been hauled away already. Not all, some of the people have never returned and their stuff just sits inside the houses, rotting even further. In the backyard, filled with rubble and the remains of a fallen tree, sunflowers were in bloom, growing up through the debris. Sunflowers that obviously hadn’t been there in August when Katrina and Rita paid their visits.
We went to Barbara’s little investment house. Its neighborhood is a working class area of small homes neatly arranged in blocks. Not a one of them escaped the destruction. Blocks and blocks of homes destroyed. A crew of UU volunteers from Massachusetts had come and helped Barbara pull the stuff out of the house. They had removed everything - even the wall board. We peeked through a neighbor’s windows to see what a house looks like that hasn’t been returned to at all. Undescribable. And the smells. Mold and oil and God knows what else mingle in the air. You can only imagine what it must have smelled like when it was still wet.
There are other neighborhoods that were not in the flood zone that have countless FEMA blue roofs. The flooded houses don’t need the blue roofs. They are already destroyed beyond consideration of roofing issues. But other neighborhoods have the kinds of damage that the towns along the North Shore experienced. Trees down, roofs blown off, sidewalks and streets broken up. The area around Tulane and Loyola Universities was like that. Some houses are badly damaged and others are barely touched. Still, the whole neighborhood is a wreck.
We think it is a small part of the city that was destroyed and that things are pretty much back to normal for many, but that isn’t true. The population of New Orleans prior to the storms was around 500,000. There are only about 70,000 people there now. There are 9000 square miles of destruction. It is estimated that 100,000 to 120,000 homes in the city will need to be completely demolished.
Well, I know you are wondering what we can do. And I can’t tell you anything that will satisfy your need to do something concrete and immediate. I heard one of the partner church people ask the fellow living in his house with no water or electricity that question. He thought long and hard about it. Eventually he said, “just don’t forget us.”
The money collected through the UUA/UUSC efforts has surpassed $3 million. More will be needed, but how it will be used is still up in the air and a council of local people and UUA and UUSC representatives is working to sort that out.
They have received countless care packages of clothing and R.E. supplies and other things. Frankly, they can’t use all they’ve receive and places like Goodwill and the Salvation Army aren’t taking it, so they are stuck with storing it. We Americans are quick to send off care packages of stuff nobody really needs in these kinds of situations.
Crews of people have come to visit and help with projects, and that will still be needed. The problem is that it is such an effort for the local folks to organize and host well-meaning visitors who want to help, but who also need to be fed and housed and directed and escorted around. We need to be organized in our efforts to help and work with folks as they need us to and as they can manage.
All the congregations in the region have partner churches arranged through the UUA. As I’ve said, representatives from the partners of North Shore were there my last few days. I worked with them and the church leadership to try to sort out priorities. It was so apparent that this effort is going to take a very long time and the needs are going to shift as time goes by. I pledged my support, and our support, to the partner church team, to stay connected and help in ways that seemed appropriate as the needs became apparent.
Right now, what the congregation needs most is infrastructure help. They are a small church operating in an informal way. Many of their key leaders are gone in the wake of the storm. They are concerned about reaching out and inviting newcomers to join them. And it seems like an important time to do that. People need a community to support them as they weather this chaos. But the congregation doesn’t have the structures in place to invite and welcome and incorporate new members very well right now. And they don’t have a clear sense of how to put all that together or the energy to do all that needs to be done.
I worked with them some on sorting out what was important to do first and how to just let other things sit for awhile. The anxiety about the church, in addition to the anxiety about life, is just too much. They have no administrator and the minister does it all, in his home, so access to communication all goes through one person. The newly hired part time Director or Religious Education left with the storm and one volunteer is running an all ages RE program for the 12 to 15 kids left in the congregation.
Meanwhile, individuals are worrying over lost jobs and homes and whether to stay or go. The traffic is a mess all day every day because of the influx of New Orleans refugees and FEMA workers and these guys with trucks I mentioned and all kinds of volunteers trying to help. Whereas New Orleans’ population is drastically reduced, the North Shore’s is drastically increased, and the roads can’t handle it. The frustration of just doing the daily round adds to the stress.
So what can we do? Not forget is one thing. If you have the means, you can pour some of your vacation dollars into New Orleans. Their tourist revenues are down to less than 25% of normal and those dollars are crucial to the city making a comeback. If you’ve ever thought you might like to go to Mardi Gras or the New Orleans Jazz Festival, this might be the year to do it.
We can keep connected and be willing to help, not just right now, but over the long haul. It will take years for the region to recover from this. Can we stand by these people over a long period of time, not forgetting them as news of newer issues comes onto the scene?
Last Sunday I had the congregation sing Let It Be A Dance and in my sermon I thanked them for the dance we had had together for these three weeks. I told them about Ric Masten, the writer of the song, and that he was doing the service here and that you would be singing Let It Be A Dance too. I said that our congregations are connected, that the dance goes across the continent, across time and space to something deeper and more fundamental between us as fellow Unitarian Universalists. I hope I was speaking for all of us when I said that we are partners with them in the dance.
We can remember and care and be ready to help when help is needed. And we can keep our own church healthy and our own relationships in good working order. What I couldn’t help but notice was that whatever was fragile in the way of human relations was further weakened by the storm, sometimes irreparably. Whatever was strong stood as a shelter and a bulwark.
Keep your relationships strong. Deal with conflicts as they arise. Don’t let things fester beneath the surface. When tragedy strikes, there isn’t time to repair the inevitable damage that is done by well-meaning people in all relationships. Repair it now. Invest in each other now. Invest in this faith community now. Don’t wait. Be present now so that we can be a strong community of memory and hope, a community of support for all when we are needed.
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