Reading: "The Slip" by Wendell Berry
and Sermon: "
What I Learned in Louisiana"
by Arthur Vaeni
April 30, 2006
[Click here to hear an audio version of this sermon.]
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Reading “The Slip” by Wendell Berry
[Copyrighted material used with Mr. Berry’s permission] What I Learned in Louisiana
Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Slip” speaks with such eloquence to the experience of a natural disaster and speaks at a still deeper level to the human experience of creation’s destructive-creative possibilities. On Monday, August 29 of last year, at 6:10 A.M., Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The impact and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina led to one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the history of the United States. It’s a crisis that continues to unfold seven months after the fact. I was with a woman who is part of the North Shore Unitarian Universalist Society when she received a call telling her that her department at one of the universities in New Orleans was being eliminated. It was news that she had been expecting, but that made it no easier to bear. It remains disconcerting to have our fears confirmed. While she had not been able to go back since the storm occurred, she now knew there was no possibility of returning. Tears flowing, speaking softly she said, “What people from the outside don’t understand is that Katrina is still happening to us.” I come to you today as your minister, your envoy to the Gulf Coast, your representative- in-service to our partner church in Lacombe, Louisiana, to tell you that the crisis isn’t over for our partner church nor for the people and communities of our nation’s Gulf Coast region. As most of you know, I return this Sunday after ministering for three weeks at North Shore. I knew when I decided to do this service, so soon upon my return, that it would be difficult, perhaps even raw, for I’ve not had adequate opportunity to process either my thoughts or feelings. Nonetheless, I knew many of you would want to hear something about my experience. I also knew, unprocessed as I may be, given how present the experience is for me, it would even be more difficult to speak of anything else. The North Shore Church is situated in what was a former pecan orchard in Lacombe. It may have more obviously been a pecan orchard before the storm, but the hurricane blew down a number of those tall, beautiful trees, some of which shaded the gardens, labyrinth and fountains the congregation had recently constructed. While North Shore is in Lacombe, their building is in the middle of a triangle formed by two other towns to the west and one small city to the east. Since the hurricane the population of this area has grown considerably. This has been good for some businesses, although there remains a significant shortage of employees for minimum-wage jobs. The population growth has also placed a strain on infrastructure. Roads are often congested far more so than ever before I was told. The congregation draws its membership from all three towns as well as farther afield. Mandeville, Lacombe and Slidell are on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain, across the lake from New Orleans. Ponchartrain is a shallow but large lake, 40 miles long, 25 miles wide. As Katrina made landfall, it caused a storm surge in the lake that flooded neighborhoods along the shore, with Slidell receiving the worst of it. When, shortly after my arrival, I visited one of the congregation’s elders in Slidell, I drove through one of those sections that flooded. Businesses were still shuttered, large piles of debris sat on the curbs, white Fema trailers were sprinkled around yards. One of those trailers was in the front yard of the elder I visited, although she and her son had recently moved back into their house. Carpet had just been laid, the walls smelled of fresh paint. The kitchen was still unplumbed and without countertops, but they were scheduled to come soon and did as I learned later. I was visiting her as I had received word she had been released from the hospital, having had a case of pneumonia. She assumed the pneumonia was a delayed reaction to the stress of the last six months. I imagine she was right, for I experienced this as a society that was stressed. Even during my brief tenure, I could feel myself absorbing the tension, the anxiety, the grief. I wasn’t fully conscious of it until midway through my visit when a visitor from another of the partner churches suddenly turned the conversation from what we were witnessing there, to inquire, “How are you doing with all this?” As soon as her words were spoken, I could feel the deep sadness and stress well up. It’s a society that I believe is carrying a sense of profound grief for all that was lost. Yet, it’s a grief that’s largely unspoken and comes out in other ways or may settle in as depression. There’s stress caused by all that has changed and much that doesn’t function as before. As June approaches, with the beginning of another hurricane season, the anxiety is palpable in the concerns expressed not just about the possible harm from another hurricane, but people’s reactions to another evacuation. I heard often about the increased levels of road rage and experienced it a couple of times myself, once when I first arrived. On the highway, I tried pulling from the left into the right-hand lane in order to exit. The driver in the right lane behind me, rather than letting me in, accelerated and cut me off. This emotional distress usually isn’t that obvious, for as more than one person told me, many people are more naturally focused on their physical recovery. And, of course, the cultural norm there calls for a good measure of graciousness in one’s daily interactions. At the same time I don’t want to paint an overly grim picture, for if you go there for a short time, you’ll perceive a society doing many of the normally good things societies do. In Covington, with some members of the congregation and their friends, I attended an outdoor concert in a park by a river; a wonderfully idyllic setting. Watching the children play and the adults eating and talking, it was an experience I would define as peace itself. Nonetheless, even in our little group, part of the conversation focused on the continuing recovery of one of the couples who had lost everything when their house was destroyed by the storm surge. Yes, the distress resides beneath the surface. Katrina is still happening to the people along the Gulf Coast. I listened to the news on Public Radio in the morning and sometimes late afternoon. Occasionally, I watched the 10:00 P.M. news from one of the local stations. After about a week, it suddenly occurred to me that most of what I was hearing in the news was related in some way to Katrina. It’s extraordinary the variety of ways Katrina continues to impact people’s lives. There are the obvious things such as the lack of housing and difficulties with repairs. Inadequate mental health services at a time when more are needed. But, as one story related, this one actually in The New York Times, would you have considered the effect on visitation rights of non-custodial parents and the effects on the children when one or the other of a divorced couple were forced out of the area? The effects of Katrina can be insidious. And, of course, there’s the physical destruction itself. While Lacombe experienced flooding from the storm surge which damaged or destroyed some homes, most of the damage there resulted from the wind. Part of the roof on the church, for example, was blown off. It’s now repaired. You see trees down everywhere, blown over, snapped off. Homes damaged by falling trees and the rain that then made its way in. Extensive as the damage was, however, it wasn’t the worst of it. Slidell, as I mentioned, which was just west of the hurricane’s path, experienced serious flooding. At the home of one of the congregation’s members, the water encompassed the first story of the house within minutes. While her family remained there, her job required her to transport two developmentally disabled adults to Baton Rouge. Between the breakdown in communications and inaccessibility of the flooded regions, several days passed before she was able to learn that her family had survived. Midway through my stay, a group arrived from the Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts congregation, another of the partner churches and one that’s done remarkable work as such. They came down to help with cleanup at individual’s homes and to make connections between the respective youth groups. On one of the days of their stay we made a trip into New Orleans, where some went into the Ninth Ward to help with cleanup, while others of us went to First Church, one of the city’s two Unitarian Universalist churches that were flooded, to help with its restoration. Driving through New Orleans East, we saw block after block of empty streets, whole apartment complexes, neighborhood shopping malls that were devastated, whole blocks of trashed, eerie emptiness. Earlier in the morning, some of us also made a quick trip to the coast of Mississippi. Julie Bosch, who is our congregation’s partner church liaison, brought four of us to see what occurred there. Julie is planning to visit us in the late summer or early fall. The forces at play that caused the damage we witnessed were hard to fathom. According to a map depicting surge elevations along the Louisiana/Mississippi border, preliminary surge elevations attained fourteen feet more than twelve miles inland. You could see household debris stuck up in trees as we drove along. In the town of Bay St. Louis, which is right on the coast, some of the neighborhoods were entirely demolished. The downtown stores and street that ran along the beach were gone. Wendell Berry wrote:
He observes that “Human wrong is in the cause, human ruin in the effect…” He doesn’t say human wrong Is the cause, but is In the cause. In this instance, if we believe human-induced global warming contributed to the conditions that gave rise to Katrina, or that the levees were inadequately constructed or maintained, or that human interventions have deteriorated the coastal shoreline in that region, then yes, we can see that human wrong is in the cause and without doubt human ruin’s in the effect. We’re reminded that even in natural disasters our actions have quite likely played some role, however far removed. While in some instances, such as the levees’ failure resulting from poor design or maintenance, blame would be an appropriate response. Nonetheless, I don’t read the need to blame into Mr. Berry’s observation that human wrong is in the cause, rather I hear it as the self-evident recognition that our human endeavors are wholly woven into creation. All we do is not something separate from creation, but we are wholly enmeshed in the grand and sometimes terrifying creative process. So, while human ruin can certainly be part of the result, if we follow along with Mr. Berry’s depiction of the creative process, then we see there’s also the possibility or perhaps even, the promise of renewal and rebirth. Not a return to what was, and that can be disconcerting in itself, but the promise of renewal through yet another of creation’s revelations. These are the words with which I ended my final sermon at North Shore:
When we grasp the fact our lives don’t exist apart from creation, then, at some deep level, we know the losses we experience, the destruction that impacts our lives, aren’t the whole story. That’s not to say that with such knowing our losses become any less crushing or the destruction any less debilitating. Yet, even in the midst of our grieving, in the midst of our struggle to recover, we may find sustenance in our remembering that our larger whole has within itself the power to heal and create anew. And we here in Olympia, need to remember we are part of that larger whole that has within itself the power to heal and create anew. It’s a power we manifest by our remaining attentive to the ongoing humanitarian crisis resulting from Katrina. By our remaining aware, and calling the attention of our government to the continuing need to support those affected. And it’s a power we manifest through remaining in relationship and offering our support to our Unitarian Universalist sisters and brothers as individuals and as communal bodies as they struggle to bring about the renewal of their congregations, as they work to ensure this religious tradition thrives in some form in that part of the country.
WHAT I LEARNED IN LOUISIANA * * * The Reverend Arthur Vaeni Minister Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation April 30, 2006 2200 East End Street NW
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