Face Down

I hate blogs. I’m really not that interesting of a person, which makes blogging completely obsolete. However, I’ve also never lived in the city where the largest national disaster in American history struck just over two years ago. That changes things. So, for those who are unable to be here, to live here, to put their finger on the pulse of the city, this blog is for that purpose. I don’t claim to understand. How could I understand devastation that intense by observing it two years later? However, there is something about living in the city as opposed to seeing pictures in the paper or on TV. I do not pretend to understand the incredible loss suffered in New York when people were jumping out of the windows of their high rise offices, but I think the people who live in New York probably do. I do not write to solicit a response, to sell you a religious service, to help us feel better that we grieved. Actually, that might be the reason. I just don’t know. I was reading in Isaiah about Jerusalem. “Oh Jerusalem, Messiah wepts for you.” It goes on to explain a watchman sitting on your walls. And then I thought about Jeremiah, as the weeping prophet. In some ways, those verses melded into a mental image for me. Sometimes I feel like I’m sitting on the walls of my own Jerusalem, and I weep for them. I sit on the walls, because I was not here. I cannot pretend that I know the depth to which people here grieve, but I know that my own grief for this Jerusalem has grown since I moved here, and for that, I am grateful to Jesus.

I recently read a biography about U2’s Bono. In it, he addressed his work in regard to aid in Africa as “justice, not charity.” I think about that here in New Orleans. Charity feels like pity. Certainly, there is sorrow and grief and your spirit bleeds for the people who used to occupy the homes marred with spray painted X’s across their doors, but it is not pity. Pity strips them of their dignity, of their genuine true emotion. It separates you from the reality of the event. As I’ve lived here now, I’m beginning to see devastation for myself. For a while, when I first moved here, I felt nothing. I allowed myself to feel nothing because I had felt nothing in San Antonio in regard to New Orleans- - I guess nothing except for pity. Now, when I can’t even drive a block from my home without seeing half the businesses and homes on my street completely unoccupied with windows blown in and roofs sagging, I am beginning to allow myself to be moved by Katrina. I want Katrina to affect me. I want to feel something—to feel my heart bleed for this city. My friend, Joe was able to shed a lot of light on the city post-Katrina that really doesn’t get talked about, except maybe on Oprah or something, but even that show is filmed far from San Antonio, so it, too, feels disconnected and impersonal from my own life. Like I said, Joe was able to help my heart feel something for these people as he explained how people have literally lost everything in this storm… and they are losing their minds. This is not metaphorical or poetic, this is real. Actually, I do have to pay Oprah some credit for her show on Katrina. On it, she told her audience that only 22 counselors have returned to New Orleans to administer counseling to people. In a city where residents are steadily losing their minds, children weep when it rains, and people don’t like to leave their houses because the traces of the nightmare still remain, the need is very great. I think I’m beginning to understand when Jesus said that the harvest is ripe but the workers are few. I sit in my safe seminary, really, the only pristine looking place in the entire 9th ward, and get restless. Half of my friends are counseling majors. I wonder to myself, could God use me better if I was a counseling major? And then I remember that I am an awful listener and never have good advice, and remember why God did not choose me for that purpose. However, there is so much that still needs to be done. But, when I consider what Bono said about Africa, and how his work is about justice as opposed to charity, I think about whether helping in New Orleans is about charity or justice. I understand that New Orleans is not one of the notches in the Bible belt. Rather, it seems to be that little black hole where morals slip down and get lost. In light of that, some have said that Katrina was justice. That pains me very much. I hate that “kill em all” attitude of believers that seeks all justice with no mercy. If we think in a more holistic approach, we realize that we are all in this together. Who was it that said “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere?” I like that quote because that person who can’t afford to build their house again, even if the house had previously been a run-down shack to start with, is still our neighbor. The person weeping on the roof of their flooded house is my neighbor now, AND when I was in San Antonio. Suddenly, their problem becomes my problem. Only because I’ve been reading Bono’s biography and respect him so much do I keep quoting him, but in regard to Africa he said, “What makes you qualified to help a person who has been knocked down in a car accident? There’s only one qualification necessary: that you happened to be there, and you happened to be able to call the ambulance[…] When you’re lying down there, choking in the road, you’re not gonna ask: “Excuse me, have you got a qualification? Are you a doctor? Do you really care about people, or are you just doing this because there’s a newspaper reporter on its way? You don’t care. Just get the job done!” Perhaps this is a better point of view. What are our qualifications?… that we love Jesus beyond all reason. It is when we think that we have qualifications that we do not help. If we realize we are bankrupt, it is then that we are willing to get our hands dirty because we have nothing to lose in doing so. This is not to say that everyone in the nation needs to rush down to New Orleans and get their hands dirty by building a house with Habitat. But, there is something to grieving and praying for a real problem. A real need. What better time for Jesus to be proclaimed in a place that is now vulnerable? “Sodom and Gomorrah” has its face in the mud. This is not an abstract Bible story—these are real people. Perhaps Christians could put on the Samaritan hat for a while, not out of pity, but out of like-mindedness to Christ. Sure, we are Levites or Priests or whatever, but clinging to a title is not clinging to Jesus. Remember, he wept for Jerusalem, and we weep for New Orleans.
Please pray for us down here. People are bowing to depression, and what is to prevent them? Someone warned me that about three months in, almost everyone who moves down here has to start fighting the tendency to get depressed. Please pray that God would use my hands, keeping them pliable to his work, before that three month time hits and my hands run the risk of turning to stone. I’m praying that winter is lifting in Narnia and perhaps, Aslan is on the move!