I have been dashing about, trying to get ready to be in the road for 31 of 36 days (where I am right now), and have not had time to write down my reflections. These are the reflections my mother wrote. It is so beautiful. Be warned, it is a tear jerker. (I love my mom!)
It is all about me
That is a joke in our family….it’s all about me….but any new
experience has to be filtered through a persons past experience, the
person’s world view. I know intellectually that all through history
groups of people have lost everything and have been displaced. But I
have never seen it up close. So many things were learned, not new,
earth-shattering discoveries (hard worn realities), but new to me,
earth-shattering to my understanding of the world. Anything I share
might sound common place in the big picture (that grows more complex
each hour with Rita), but since I just experienced it, it is
extraordinary to me…..remember…it is all about me. As a trip over
many time zones, jet lag pulls at your body. I feel I have emotional
jet lag, which is pulling at my heart, so forgive me it I am a bit teary.
So, I offer some disorganized thoughts…
Laney, Gene David and I arrived at a shelter 60 miles from New Orleans.
This is only one small piece of this disaster. There are at least 80
shelters in La. alone.When the evacuees started showing up in this town,
all the phones were out, and local people went door to door to organize
a meeting to get organized. The community opened the Civic Center and
kicked into disaster (read as compassion) mode. They attempted to meet
all the needs of these traumatized, dispossessed people without the help
of FEMA, the Red Cross or any government agency.(who didn’t show up for
a week) The shelter housed about 1,700 people. It is believed about
7000 are being housed in local homes.
A few days after the shelter in Houma opened, the folks with Adore
Ministry saw a need to get evacuees out of the
shelter and to their family or friends in other areas. They formed the
Starfish Operation, based on the well worn story of the child throwing
one starfish at a time back into the ocean, despite the fact there are
thousands of starfish on the beach.. Through private donations, they
sent well over 800 people on to family and friends who would accept
them, by arranging bus tickets, airline tickets, Angel Wings flights,
entire buses, gas money and rides. Each person or family a starfish.
And the Operation continues. In the enormity of this disaster, it still
comes down to helping one person.
One of the many things we learned while we were there, was the immense
size of the disaster and the extreme complexity of the problems that
have arisen and will continue for years to come.
We observed and shared the despair of the obvious losses of the everyday
stuff of your life; clean underwear, your toothbrush. Also the despair
of so many less obvious losses; your neighborhood and your best friend
who lives across the street ( and you don’t even know what state she is
in), your favorite grocer, your church and your favorite priest, your
coffee ladies/men, your photos including pictures of your children as
babies and your deceased parents, the necklace your grandmother gave
you, your doctor, that house you have spent a lifetime making a home,
control over what food you eat, the rooms you celebrated all your
family’s milestones, the security you feel when you tuck in the kids
and close the front door…and it just goes on and on.
The despair of sitting with a woman who has called several family
members around the country, asking for shelter and being turned down.
The despair of a woman with 5 children with nowhere, no one to go to.
The despair of being hugged so tightly by a woman who says over and
over how scared she is, as she leaves for another state with an adult
son and 5 grandchildren, leaving behind everything she has ever known
including part of her family. The despair of being let down by your
government of so many levels.
But we also observed and shared in tremendous generosity, resilience and
hope. The people of this town are tremendous. This is in Cagin’
country, my first experience, and I am ready to move there. The people
are generous, polite and loving, though a bit hard to understand. The
volunteers at the shelter were local people, some who had as many as 17
displaced family and friends staying in there home; plus many
volunteers who were displaced from New Orleans, staying with relatives
in the area, just waiting to hear if there homes or jobs still existed.
They were there everyday. And they were thankful it be alive. I heard
that over and over again, how thankful they were, from volunteers and
residents of the community (as they are called). We observed the
tremendous generosity of people from all over the country as donations
pored in. From boxes of athletic gear and shoes from the U of Nebr, to
phone cards, toys, formula, diapers, new underwear (praise God, it gets
down to basics) to a box of clothes sent by a 9 year old boy from Bronx,
NY. An enclosed letter councils the boy that may receive his donation,
that maybe his new teacher with be the best and he will find a new best
friend. And the energy of so many volunteers to sort all this
everyday stuff that makes up our lives, and get it to the community. It
is so beautiful, it comes down to community, I feel I witnessed the
Body of Christ.
The hope of an elderly gentleman who was one of a handful to survive
after being left in a nursing home. With the work of Starfish, he was
reunited with an estranged son in CA and flown to live with the family
he hadn’t seen in years and meet grandchildren he had never met. The
resilience a of baby who finally started to eat after two days trapped
on a roof with his dad and a week in the shelter. The joy of the
volunteers as we located new shoes for 2 men who had walked 62 miles
from New Orleans. The joy of a man when we located new shoes for
him…he wore a 15 1/2. It came down to community, again and again.
but I struggle with the fact that it is just a hug given, or a pair of
shoes…..such a small gesture given the obstacles the people of this
region have to face. I will continue to pray people keep coming into
their lives and helping them on their journey. And since it’s all about
me remember, I will now filter all my new experience through what i have
been blessed enough to witness and share and i hope it will make me a
changed and (or as the Jesuits say) ruined person.

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