Greetings from New Orleans
Diocesan Communications Editor, Sharon Tillman, is in New Orleans for the House of Bishops meeting. She is sending first-hand reports and her reflections on the meeting and the state of the city two years after hurricane Katrina.
Wednesday, September 19
Healing Service at St. Anna's, New Orleans
Every Wednesday night the Rev. William Perry holds a healing service, hosts a dinner, offers basic medical services and screenings, and provides a stage from some of the city's best musicians. The white-haired, pony tailed rector does it with grace, humor and truth.
The church's mission, he said before starting the service, is to minister to the city's musicians. Since Katrina, most are out of work, and those who are working are paid less than they were prior to the storm. Rents have doubled or even tripled - going from $400 per month to as much as $1,200. Factor in that there are fewer venues and the picture is grim.
During the service we sang old spirituals - Down by the Riverside - accompanied by a saxaphone. After communion about 25 people approached the altar for healing. It was very moving service. The offering will go directly to the church's fund to benefit musicians.
Outside St. Anna’s I got a full sense of the ministry St. Anna’s provides to the city. A mobile medical clinic is parked outside, hanging on the building is a list of the city’s murder victims in 2007. This is a parish deeply concerned about the city.
Dinner was served in the parish hall; free for musicians, $5 for the rest of us. An offering was taken later for the musicians.
I saw the affect of Katrina first-hand: On the faces of the musicians, the congregation and in that long list of murder victims.
Thursday, September 20
My first full day of volunteering took a few twists and turns, literally.
I started with a work crew in east New Orleans set to sand drywall and prime the walls for painting. A call came from the Diocese of Louisiana - a volunteer was needed to help move stuff to the convention center for the evening ecumenical service. I volunteered.
While I wasn't spending that time helping a family get closer to moving back into their destroyed home, I got to see neighborhood after neighborhood of devastation. And, riding around with Ben, the diocesan logistics manager, gave me an inside look at life in New Orleans.
Ben, who recently got his undergraduate degree in city planning, talked about the city's growing population - from half its pre-Katrina number last year up to two thirds this year. In his opinion it will take some forward thinking by residents to affect major change. A native New Orleanian, Ben said it is a city set in its ways.
I returned to the work site with an hour and a half left to sand. Seventeen of us returned home covered in dust, sore, exhausted and satisfied. Day 3 will be spent at the same site, completing day 2's work.
Last night's ecumenical service was nothing short of amazing. Leaders from Louisiana churches, bishops from Louisiana and Mississippi, the presiding bishop and archbishop led a congregation of bishops, local clergy, guests and press through a service featuring gospel music, traditional hymns and a New Orleans funeral procession. Trust me, the jazz music got everyone on their feet and inspired an impromptu stream of "mourners" dancing through the aisles of the convention center auditorium waving handkerchiefs. Known as the "second line," the celebration of life comes after the deceased has been laid to rest and the mourners return to the city led by musicians.
That's how the service ended. During the service many leaders spoke of renewal, restoration and re-centering in God. The ABC Rowan Williams gave the homily, focusing on our indebtedness to one another, and the need to rebuild the city so that the elderly can again sit in the streets in safety and children can play in the streets. (Zechariah 8:3-13)
It was an inspired evening.
Friday, September 21
More volunteering
What a day! The team I was assigned to returned to the house we had been sanding the previous day. First, each of us was assigned a job by our team leader, Maggie.
First things first, finish sanding all the walls. Donning masks and goggles 17 of us spread out and made short work of that. Next came washing down the walls, then priming, priming and more priming.
I spent my entire day in someone else's destroyed home; painting as if it were my own. It's the home of a middle class working couple whose life was turned upside down by Katrina. Not an usual story given that 80 percent of New Orleans was flooded.
Working with the diocese's Office of Disaster Relief has been energizing. The interns are 20-somethings who earn very little but seem to get huge rewards. They work on site with the volunteer crews. They are here from Wisconsin, Maryland - Montgomery County - and other states because they want to help.
We heard that the homeowners had stopped by Thursday night and were grateful for what we had accomplished. That alone made getting covered in dust, paint and sweat worth it.
In the evening our group went to dinner at St. George's Church. Since the storm they have operated the Dragon's Den, a soup kitchen for locals and volunteer workers. We sat with a man from the neighborhood whose kitchen had been flooded and he's been eating and serving there since. He's also a parishioner there. The soup kitchen is open Thursdays and Fridays.
The height of the evening was our discussion with House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson. She talked about her life, her work and the church.
She is an advocate of the MDGs, affirming laypeople and telling the Episcopal Church's "public narrative." One of her goals is for the church to tell its story to the world.
I am off to Mississippi tomorrow to see Katrina's long-lasting affect there. Bishop and Sharon Rabb will be there also.
Saturday September 22
Camp Coast Care
It is early Saturday morning and a caravan of bishops is driving east on I-10 out of New Orleans and into what was the suburbs. They are headed to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to tour some of the damage, visit a rebuilt house and later work. Camp Coast Care in Pass Christian will be their base camp for the afternoon. Bishop John Rabb, his wife, Sharon, and Assisting Bishop Rodney Michel are among those headed east to see a different kind of destruction. So am I, with a small group of Episcopal Communicators from Florida to Vermont.
Hurricane Katrina caused approximately 90,000 square miles of damage, an area roughly the size of Great Britain. In parts of New Orleans and some of the surrounding areas, the damage from the storm was largely caused by flooding – 80% of the city was underwater – and the typography led to standing water. Some areas were underwater for days. To the east in towns such as Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian, both in Mississippi, there was flooding, but the water receded. The water just didn’t stick around like it did in parts of Louisiana. It was the force of the water combined with the estimated 150 mph+ winds that destroyed homes, businesses, churches and lives along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The first stop on the tour is Christ Church in Bay St. Louis. All that separates the church from the Gulf of Mexico is the road. All that remained of the church after the storm was the steeple, which is prominently displayed in between the office trailer and worship tent. A youth group painted a simple labyrinth with a shell in the center on concrete in front of the steeple. The setting today is peaceful and the view over the gulf beautiful.
All along the coast road are empty foundations, houses in various states of repair, the occasional trailer and very few people. It is overcast and hot, we pass a few groups fishing, but no one is frolicking in the water or tanning on the beach. Lauren Autonberry, communications director for the Diocese of Mississippi and our tour guide, explains that chances are there is still debris just offshore and she wouldn’t want to take a chance.
Next stop is Pass Christian, a pretty coastal town with turn-of-the-century architecture and an uncertain future. The setting along Scenic Drive is genteel. Wide sweeping lawns, broad front porches and unique, classic homes (some passed down from generation to generation) line several miles of the coast. But a storm of another kind is brewing: developers are knocking at the door and the locals are fighting to keep them at bay. Signs that read “Keep Scenic Drive Scenic” line the street. Lauren explained that people here don’t want cookie-cutter houses replacing the homes that were destroyed; they don’t want the condos. They want to preserve the charm and heritage of the area. This type of fall-out surprises me at first. It’s a tough fight, progress vs. preservation, property-owner rights vs. community desires.
What is not surprising is who is doing much of the work to rebuild the area. The faith-based community has stepped up in a big way and really taken the lead on rebuilding and supporting families in need. Hallelujah Housing is supported by Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD). This grant program supplies gap funding and “soft” second mortgages to help with rebuilding and/or raising a structure off the ground. The dilemma many residents find themselves in is they can’t get a loan (construction or mortgage) without home-owners insurance, but they can’t get the insurance without first raising their home off the ground and setting it on pillars; an expensive process. Hallelujah Housing is one of many faith-based programs helping residents come home.
Trinity Church sits a few blocks inland, but was all but destroyed in the storm. Today the congregation is celebrating the groundbreaking of their new complex. Sporting shirts that read “The Church is not a Building,” members of this 158 year old parish stand together under threatening skies to embrace the future. The Rt. Rev. Duncan Gray, bishop of Mississippi, and the Rev. Chris Colby, rector of Trinity Church, lead the 20 minute service, complete with a word from the town’s mayor and construction equipment busy clearing the site for the town’s new elementary/middle school across the street. Trinity, Colby says, is poised to be a leader in the community’s rebirth, offering support to the teachers and administrators of the new school and to the citizens of Pass Christian. Inside what is left of the church, which is a skeleton wrapped in insulation, are drawings and plans for the new church complex. While talk of this rebuild started pre-Katrina, the storm set the project in motion. One significant difference from the current structure will be the church’s placement on the lot. It will now sit catty-corner to the gulf to help dissipate the force from a future storm.
My small group was given the option of heading to Camp Coast Care for lunch with the bishops or having lunch on our own. It occurred to me that I would much rather pay someone for lunch than be fed by a group. It surprised me how adamant I felt about this. Here we were in an area desperate for economic growth as well as volunteer labor. My advice to you is when you go, spend money. Aside from being thanked for coming down to help, people also thanked us for simply spending our money – supporting the local economy. I am certainly not shunning the groups that feed the volunteers – when that Loaves and Fishes lunch truck drove up Friday morning with sandwiches, fruit, water, snacks, cookies, iced tea and lemonade I was right there and grateful for it. But when you can, pay your way.
We caught up with the bishops and their spouses at Camp Coast Care as they were being divided into work crews. Bishop John and Sharon Rabb were staying in town to paint a retired teacher’s house. Others were headed to Gulf Port, further east, to either drywall or work on strapping ceiling trusses and complete electrical work at two houses. I tagged along to bear witness to the painting. While there I had a chance to talk with the Rabbs about what they had seen.
From Bishop Rabb: “It is amazing that there is still so much to be done, but also heartening how the faith-based communities have absolutely been in the forefront of the rebuilding. It is crucial that groups like KERMIT and others throughout the diocese continue their housing ministries because it is fair to say that is project will be ongoing. And, I have heard wonderful things about what members of our diocese have done to support the Gulf Coast. Camp Coast Care has evolved from providing emergency relief, which went exceedingly well, to a center for the redevelopment of the coastal region. The support from ERD and the Episcopal Church as a whole is evident in both Louisiana and Mississippi.
Sharon Rabb compared this experience to similar work she did in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch. “I went with a group of bishop’s spouses to Honduras to rebuild a village outside of San Pedro Sula. The work here is the same, but this experience is unique because it hits so close to home on U.S. soil.”
Having taken as many photos of people painting as possible, Mary, an editor from Southeast Florida, and I returned to Camp Coast Care with Sarah, a construction supervisor for the camp. At 26 she was drifting along, not sure where her life was headed until she came down with her church in June for a week of rebuilding. By August she had the job at the camp and had packed up and left Connecticut. In one sense she reminded me of myself at that age – not yet knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up; but she had taken a leap of faith, struck out on her own, into the relative unknown, to create a future. All of the people I met who have redirected their lives to work throughout the area have one thing in common: Conviction. Each person is absolutely sure about the work he or she is doing and the difference they are making in people’s lives. That’s impressive.
While waiting for the crews to return, Mary and I wandered around taking pictures of the camp and the amazing sign sculpture that has grown around an old tree near the basketball court. For those of you old enough to remember M*A*S*H, picture the signs pointing toward home in the middle of camp – same idea. Mission groups have fashioned signs from vinyl siding, scrap lumber, even ceiling fan blades with group names and miles to home painted or written in marker and hung them on and around this tree. It is spectacular. Pink lawn flamingoes peek out making me laugh, and boat propellers remind me that together we are moving forward.
Another highlight of the afternoon was an impromptu chat with Bishop Gray. Mary and I were sitting just inside the doors to the main building when he sat down and showed us a book. Story of a Storm was written and illustrated by a teacher and children of the Coast Episcopal School, for which Camp Coast Care is named and where the camp is located. Coast School teacher Reona Visser began the project as a way for students to process what had happened to their homes, friends and lives, and to keep the children engaged until the school reopened. The resulting book raises money for hurricane relief and is in its third printing. Have a box of tissues handy when you read it.
It is nearing 4:30 in the afternoon and the work crews are returning to the camp. Charles Woods, the camp’s supervisor of construction, is speechless when I ask him how the bishops faired. “I am at a loss for words. The whole house has been painted, half a house is sheet rocked, and the strapping and electrical work is finished!” (Strapping is a new building code. Metal u-shaped plates wrap around roof joists, attaching to the underside of the roof and down the walls to keep the roof from being torn off in future storms.)
Fewer vans, but the same number of people are returning to New Orleans, so we find our half-empty communicators van now full. Among the passengers is Presiding Bishop Katharine Jeffers Schori. It had been a long day for everyone so casual conversation was all we could muster. This was not the time for an exclusive interview anyway.
Back in New Orleans, where Bishop Ihloff and his wife, Nancy, had spent their day working (Assisting Bishop Michael Creighton is in China and did not attend the House of Bishops meeting), I collapsed relieved to hear that the evening’s planned service had been cancelled due to the threatening weather. My colleagues and I celebrated our work and fellowship with one last dinner together, which we paid for, and thanked our amazing hosts.
Sunday we returned home to our dioceses, spreading the news of what has been done and what has been left undone, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Please support the relief efforts along the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans. Follow the links to the Web sites of relief agencies, mission groups and others committed to rebuilding. Thank you for coming along with me on my journey to gulf.
KERMIT: Church of St. Christopher www.stchris.org
Diocese of Louisiana: www.edola.org
Office of Disaster Response: www.edola.org/odr
Diocese of Mississippi: www.dioms.org follow links to Camp Coast Care and Hallelujah Housing
