“How did you live for a year, outside?”

Pray for the woman to whom I asked this question. I can’t give her name. God will know.

She started to answer me, totally willingly until we ran out of time. We both want to talk more. When I understand her story, I will share what she permits me to.

People seem to react in fear to me, when I tell stories. Particularly when I connect my life, to the people I meet who are homeless. I’m trying to wrap my head around that, so I can learn to communicate the street to the church in a way that translates. Because the reaction I get from kind, compassionate, middle-class people is not helpful, and it makes me feel terribly alone.

I have the best, best friend there ever was. Her job is secure. These two facts remind me that I’m safe, when I think about life after graduation. She’ll help me bridge the transition, and I know I’ll be okay.

The truth: The only thing that keeps any of us safe, is love. Your fear does not help me. And it certainly does not help people who can’t advocate effectively for themselves. Go outside, and listen. Ask questions until you understand. Give volunteer hours: drive people to appointments, or soup kitchens. (The amount of walking that some of them do, in the course of a normal day, contributes to destroying their bodies.) Advocate for them, within what remains of the social-service system. Work to change social policy: these agencies need funding. We all need access to stable health care.

Pay your damn taxes. Complain, when they’re cut. Any of us could switch places. Yes, it’s scary. That’s why I need you to breathe through your fear. React, in love.

Teach me how to tell these stories, so that you can hear them.

Good Friday

I met a man in the street last week; a homeless veteran, HIV+ for 30 years. He was deciding whether to let the cancer he was just diagnosed with, take him.

He has healthcare benefits. Nothing else: the VA refuses to declare him disabled. That's why he sleeps outside.

I will always have housing, on a friend's floor if nothing else. If I let my healthcare lapse, I may not ever get it back. Cancer is a pre-existing condition, no matter that I beat it. Insurance companies can refuse me.

Cancer comes back. It may not, but it may. The questions are if, and when. I could be free and clear forever. I could have a recurrence in one year, or two, or fifteen. It could cost me nothing but money. It could kill me.

I told his story, and repeated mine, to a group of people I’m very close to. They couldn’t hear what the loss of access, and the threat of it, does to people’s souls. I named fear and anger; they ran away.

Could you not watch with me for one hour?

I look strong, and I am. I have had to be. This body carries everything that the last year has given me. I've gotten used to doing things, that I'd never thought I'd have to.

I know you can’t fix this—but please, please don’t leave me alone. I can’t leave him. I am not separate from him. You are not separate from me. I could be you. Before last April, I was you.

You walked with me through cancer; walk with me, into power. When I was well, and younger in so many ways, someone else’s anger would have scared the shit out of me. Now I get it: Don’t change the subject. Sit. Here.

Let this cup pass from me.

I am not willing to be a sacrifice. I am not, you. I am, yours—but let my suffering be redemptive. Let me learn to communicate from the street to the classroom, to the church. Let me tell this story, in a way that they can hear.

Flaming torches in the garden. Military doctors, insurance executives with swords raised. Shouts, rough hands grabbing.

They came for the man I met. I know they are coming for me. And if me, they can reach anyone.

Please, please understand me. Don’t turn away, back to your comfortable life. My hands are as dirty as yours. The worst thing we can do, is to wash them.

That hammer thuds through the ages. Crucifixion is not merely history. Are you on the timbers yourself? Are you forging the nails? Weeping with Mary? Or are you bearing witness: writing, educating, shouting? Are you working on just social policy, including healthcare access for all people?

Where? I need ideas. Sending a MoveOn petition is not enough.

The system is too big for any one of us to dismantle. But we’re the only ones who can.

My God, my God, for what have you called me?

I told his story again to a friend. She understood. She knew she couldn’t fix it; she sat with me, and felt what I was feeling. Her presence soothed my rage. She shared my grief, and gave me hope.

The women come, to wash the body. Where can it be found?

Thoughts about power and choice

I had a flu-bug about a week ago. Not the real flu; it wasn’t bad enough. But fever for a couple of days, and coughing. I got over it quickly, but didn’t get my energy back until late in the week. And I still haven’t felt like blogging. I’m just doing this so you all know I’m all right.

Open Cathedral yesterday was amazing. It was cold, and pouring buckets on us. It answered the question for me, “Do you really want to do this, when it’s miserable out?” Yes. I was putting sandwiches and cookies on paper plates, afterwards, and could barely move my hands. But the community really started to happen. People shared umbrellas… it was gorgeous.

I had meant, for several days, to write about power and choice. And then I bore witness to a decision, not yet public, that I deeply (and angrily) disagree with. I can’t go there yet, on this blog. But it fuels my thinking about responsibility to others.

I went to part of a “diversity day” at school, the week before I got sick. We had a large-group presentation, then we split into small groups (of about eight people). We were assigned to discuss words: culture, anti-racism, and another I’ve forgotten. We talked about exposure to things beyond our previous experience. Someone brought up the metaphor of hatching: you think the world is your little egg, and you find out suddenly it’s bigger.

Someone else said something about cracking your own egg. I asked about it; I was apparently the only one who didn’t get this. People jumped in with examples of what they’d done: move far away for college, that sort of thing. They said, surely you’ve expanded your own horizons?

I still don’t really agree. I’ve chosen things that have challenged me, on purpose because I wanted or needed the growth. But the cancer diagnosis broke the hell out of any egg I was ever nestled in. I’ve done what I’ve done, with the pieces. I’m mostly proud of the person I’m becoming. But I had no control over the hammer.

I think of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books that stormed my elementary school in fifth grade. You really never can, choose your own adventure. You can buy a ticket to somewhere—but you don’t know what will happen to you there, or who you’re going to be.

It’s not what causes your hatching. It’s what you do with who you are, when you see the world around you.

So that was a Wednesday. Thursday was Community Night; the guest preacher at our Eucharist was an alum, and an acquaintance of mine from here and there. He’s rector of a parish somewhere in Marin. And he preached about how the recession is affecting his community here and his family, globally. And how it’s a crucifixion for all of us, and what that means—or could mean—for who we are as a culture. It was all about courage.

I sat there, very mindful of my own medical “crucifixion,” and wondered how in hell I’m supposed to do anything at all about the economy. I’m graduating with debt. I live in a dorm room—I don’t even have space to share. And I thought more deeply about the whole power/choice dynamic. I actively, more-or-less willingly, make myself sick. I’ll be doing it for four more months. There’s so much I can’t do, because I do this. I do it because I have access to medical treatment. And because I don’t want to get cancer again.

I didn’t choose the illness. I do choose the treatment. That’s where the crucifixion analogy stops for me. The people who are really being crucified aren’t the bankers. I don’t have sympathy for people who can’t figure out how to survive on $500,000 a year (per recent NYT op-ed article). Those who are really suffering, are the people who can’t find even a minimum-wage job in this economy. Someone told me about (I think it was) her husband, meeting people in a shelter, on a trip to New York. One of the residents asked him, “Do you know the difference between you and me?” He answered, “No.” The man said to him, “Three paychecks.”

Three paychecks, between having a safe, warm, dry home and living on the street. Jesus.

And do not start me on health care.

Anyway: Jesus chose his crucifixion. He knew what the risks were, and he took them. He knew what he was doing.

I know what I’m doing, injecting myself with interferon. And I know that I will survive. I’ll come out of this different, but I will in many ways be healed. I didn’t choose the illness—I do choose the cure. I’ve said before, that having cancer cured me of a lot of crap. (And do I need to say that I’m aware that my sacrifice is for myself, only?)

As far as the economy goes, the level of “choice” is different. I don’t know how my choices broke the banks; I’ve never owned anything as monumental as a house. But the choice in front of all of us now, is how we’re going to live when we have to alter our circumstances. The most humane thing we possibly could do, now or ever, is share what we have. I don’t have a spare couch. I do have food.

I’m caught on Richard’s crucifixion metaphor, because the element of choice for Jesus was so much greater than what I see on the street. It doesn’t really matter who’s up there (here?), and you don’t get down, without dying. It matters, what we say and what we teach and what we do. How you live matters, even when you’re stretched on the instrument which you believe will kill you. That’s the only way to survive.

We talked briefly, afterward; he knows what I’m going through medically, and I was beginning to sort through these thoughts. He mentioned that some of his parishioners in Marin—remember, uber-wealthy—have “lost everything.”

I had to interrupt him, and he understood. You only lose everything, when you lose your life.

One of my friends from Open Cathedral gave someone the extra bag of sandwiches, so he could take them back and share them with the people where he sleeps. Remember, this was a cold, blustery, soaked-to-the-skin afternoon. The man said he was okay with sleeping in the doorway at the Y, because others need shelter beds more.

That is a resurrection life.

Tibet, the Olympics, Jesus, and the color orange

Pic stolen from Caminante.

One strand of my online community is discussing whether or not the US should boycott the Olympics. The torch just passed through San Francisco; I’d have gone to the vigil, if I’d been clear about when and where it was. (Our school e-mail server was down, and I only look at the Chronicle headlines my Google homepage shows me.)

After some thought, I don’t support boycotting. It wouldn’t change Chinese policy; they already know that much of the world doesn’t want them in Tibet. Boycotting the Olympics would only up the anger ante between the US and China. (I’ll refrain from delving into such issues as Iraq and hypocrisy, here. I leave political blogging to my friends who can stomach it; I go too quickly to cynicism, and I hate when it eats at me.)

A boycott would affect the athletes most of all, and I really think their participation should be their own call—not a choice made for them by an imperfect government. We don’t live in the idealistic world that athletic harmony is supposed to point to. If you can hang out with people from different cultures, and befriend those who come from vastly different places, I think that’s a good thing.

If you leave the table, your voice leaves with you. I do believe it’s important to speak out when others’ human rights are trampled. I have freedoms that Tibetan monks, and ordinary people, do not. I can say what I want to, about my own government or China’s, and not be jailed, beaten, or killed for it.

What I know of occupation comes from two places: having shared friends in common with Rachel Corrie,* and studying the Gospels. [Israeli citizens have a right to a safe home. As do all human beings.] Military occupation stems from greed, and legalizes violence. The occupying power dehumanizes the people already living in the land they want to claim. Crucifixion was never done to Roman citizens. Jesus, born in Judaea, was killed by servants of the Roman occupying power. He was crucified for challenging the system.

He could just as easily be a Tibetan. A monk, one of thousands jailed and over a hundred murdered, by Chinese troops. Killed for saying, “Your government is unjust.”

Were you there, when they crucified my Lord?

I wasn’t watching. I am writing this because we—I—need to wake up.

What you can do:

Wear the color orange when the torch comes to your city, and during the Games. This site has many more ideas for action.

Write to your government, asking for pressure to be put on China to stop the violence against Tibetans.

Seek out information you won’t get from the mainstream media. Share what you learn.

*Incidentally, today would have been Rachel's 29th birthday. Craig and Cindy, I think of you often.

Grinning ear to ear

Go here to see why.

God bless the people of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin.

Alternative Holiday Shopping

Jane Redmont, formerly of the GTU and now teaching at a Quaker college in North Carolina, has a wonderful blog called Acts of Hope. She posted a list of resources for alternative, environmental and social-justice friendly gift buying. Other ideas are listed in the comments. Go check it out!

If you're in the Olympia area, please visit Traditions. It's a fair-trade import store, meaning that artisans actually get paid decently for their work. It's also a performance space, and a community treasure. (And give Dick and Jody my best. They're wonderful people. She was my doppelganger when I lived up there, and I never minded being mistaken for her.)

Please add your own resources, either in the comments here or at Jane's. Thank you!

Finding home, in myself

I went to church yesterday, and spent the rest of the day with adopted family. I hadn't gotten to hang out with them in about a month; either they or I had been busy or gone. It's a month, that a lot of personal work has happened in.

We had a really good time. I was in a quiet mood, but I haven't laughed that much in ages. And I kept noticing things in myself that were different—nothing huge, but lots of significant small things. I'm in a different place—a stronger, more secure, more authentic place—and I've never been here before, but it feels like home.

They saw it too, from the first second they saw me. I went to the Ranch, did everything I did there, and came back looking visibly healthy.

Yay and alleluia.

The march on Saturday was great, or at least the parts I attended. I met Bishop Marc and the rest of our group at Grace Cathedral, and we marched, singing, down the hill to the Civic Center. I stayed for a few of the speakers: a student leader, Code Pink, Tom Ammiano, and my bishop—and then my homework called me, and I left. (I don't know where Dolores Park is, or even if I just spelled it right, and didn't feel like navigating Muni as well as BART to get home. Also, I'd just come from a retreat center out in nowhere, and was feeling crowded out in the city.)

As I was leaving, others came in; the labor contingent was huge, and the total number of marchers was something like 10,000. I'm really glad it happened, and that I got to be part of it, and on a different day I'd have stayed for everything.

Monday. Ugh. Gotta go.

Two years after Katrina

While it's still the Fourth...

go here.

Thank you, Keith Olbermann. And to all of us: please speak, clearly and effectively, while we can, because we can.

Eyes Wide Open

If you're in the SF Bay Area, come to this event remembering the war dead in Iraq tomorrow.

Cut-and-pasting from the Facebook page:

Event Info
Name: eyes wide open
Tagline: remembrance of the war dead in iraq
Host: quakers
Date: Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Time: 10:00am - 1:00pm
Location: federal building, 450 golden gate and larkin, San Francisco, CA

Description
empty shoes and boots represent the nearly 400 californians, over 3,000 americans, and 600,000 iraqis who have died in the iraq war. there is a press conference at 10 a.m. bishop marc will be among the speakers"Eyes Wide Open" exhibition in front of the Federal Building at 450 Golden Gate & Larkin

I love my bishop

...because he's not afraid to speak for justice.

Go here to see what I'm talking about.

Thank you, Bishop Marc.

On incense, progress, and inclusion

I am, among other contradictions, an asthmatic seminarian. CDSP is nothing like Nashotah House; we use incense, but only on high feast days.

Last night turned out to be one of them. My advisor, also Dean of the Chapel, was installed as the Kaehr Chair for Liturgical Studies (I think that’s close to her title). I couldn’t go to the liturgy, because I knew there would be incense. But when I went to congratulate her at dinner, she told me why they’d made that choice. The Kaehrs really love incense, and were very clear in their hopes that it would be used at her installation. Up to that point, they hadn’t been planning to.

I would have loved to have been at the liturgy, and Lizette knows that. She also knows that I’m impressed that she thought of me. She’s pastoral, hilarious, and I love her to pieces—but I was not aware that my breathing issues influenced chapel decisions. I’m really glad that they do, both for myself and for other people. I have one more academic year here. I’ve been told I wasn’t alone—my mentor last year was fantastically supportive—but I’ve often felt on my own in this. I haven’t heard of any others who share my experience, or who are vocal about it. I know that there will be.

I’ve spoken up often, but I’ve tried to be clear and calm about it. Mostly I just say when I can’t participate. If the sacristans are looking for last-minute volunteers, I write back asking if there’s incense (if I’m not sure), and offering to help if there isn’t. It was harder for me emotionally last year than now. I am still excluded by the presence of incense, but I don’t take that personally, anymore. Today, I’m thrilled to have been thought of last night. People are basically good, and well-intentioned. I’m glad that my presence changes their approach to issues of inclusion/exclusion, even if that doesn’t lead to instant change of action. Awareness is a very good thing.

One of the people I love the most here is entering a new phase of “fraudulent retirement,” and we honored him and another retiring faculty member last week in chapel. I had thought there would be incense, because the rota read “Thurifer TBA,” and so told John I couldn’t go. He would be preaching. I went home after class, and he went to rehearsal. He called me to tell me they weren’t using it, and I could attend. I went, happily, and thanked him.

Both last week and this, when my inability to participate because of incense came up, John has suggested I stand outside so I can listen. I won’t do that—it feels even more exclusionary to watch from afar, and not to be able to come in and receive Communion. It’s really not a compromise at all. I haven’t told him that, though, because the presence of incense wasn’t something he could change at the last minute, and I know he means well. He wants me to feel free to participate in any way I can, and sees that as a way I could at least listen to the liturgy. His heart’s completely in the right place. To me, however, standing outside is analogous to being in the Court of the Asthmatic Gentiles.

I’ve been breathing comfortably at my parish since I landed there; other people blazed that trail long before me. One couple in particular are good friends of mine, and we talk about this often. Their concern is not only for themselves and their friends; they worry about the rise in childhood asthma caused by air pollution. They sent me a stack of articles related to incense and the church, which I haven’t had time to read closely. There are some interesting angles, though, and again I’m glad it isn’t just me. Other people have asked me, incredulously, how I could consider entering the clergy if I can’t tolerate incense. The answer to that is easy: I would be up front with my limitations, and I would seek positions in safe churches. Before I came to California, incense was rarely an issue. My parish is safe, as is the one where I’m considering interning a year from now. I know there are others.

To me, it’s all about inclusion—not only of myself, but of everyone. We build ramps so that everyone can enter the building; we experiment with the words used in worship so that those who have been excluded can fully participate. I’m doing my best to raise awareness that people with asthma still love the church, still want to participate in the worshipping community, and still are called to serve God here.

People are hearing me, and I'm glad.

Stringfellow: Challenge and Hope in an Alien Land

I wrote this paper two weeks ago, the day before I went to New Orleans. I'm still processing that trip, and thinking about the question of how to live responsibly in this world as I experience it. I see the world differently, since returning from there. But these questions are still relevant, and so I share them with you.

Creation is fallen, asserts William Stringfellow, all of it; the humans, the animals, everything. Further, America is the Babylon of the Book of Revelation. Identity with the biblical Jerusalem is completely beyond us. There is no hope for our warlike, greed-driven society and culture. So, whatever shall we do?

Stringfellow opens An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land with the whole of Psalm 37. This is the famous lament of the exile in Babylon, which begins in remembrance and weeping, and ends with the image of dashing a Babylonian child’s head against a rock. In his preface, he asserts the error in conceiving of the US as Zion, and a similar error in reading the Bible as if it were an apolitical document (14). He invokes the authority of Revelation (16), of which he will extensively use the Babylon passages later. He recalls the principalities and powers, discussed in depth in Free in Obedience, and states his intention to inform Americans about the reality of the Fall (19).

Why is Babylon relevant? Because it is cursed; the once-great city crashes down. “The violent disintegration of this most rich and most powerful of all nations: Babylon—should incite jubilation in heaven.” (25) This most powerful nation is our own, and we have failed to comprehend its future; we are demoralized, impoverished, incapacitated (27). Where we need moral wisdom, it is absent (28). Our hearts are hardened; we cannot see or hear outside of ourselves (29). We are morally asleep (31). Babylon is the city of death; Jerusalem is the city of life. We are awash in what makes a Babylon: “alienation, babel, slavery, war.” (34) We know what peace is; Stringfellow’s implication is that we never choose it. He writes this book “for the exorcism of that vain spirit.” (34)

How that exorcism will happen is a little bit vague. The biblical topic is politics (42), being, as it is, a story of God’s relationship to God’s people. You can’t have community without politics; you can’t have God without community. (56) But “the ethics of biblical politics offer no basis for divining specific… solutions for any social issue.” (54) The Bible won’t tell you the will of God for any situation particular to your experience. There are no simple answers. You have to ask a broader question: “How to live humanly during the Fall?” (55)

For we live both in earthly and spiritual contexts; both in Berkeley and in Babylon. Stringfellow continues, “A Christian lives politically within time, on the scene of the Fall, as an alien in Babylon, in the midst of apocalyptic reality.” We are members of “Christ’s church, [citizens] of Jerusalem, the holy nation which is already and which is vouchsafed, during the eschatological event.” (63) We are not here only on behalf of ourselves; we are here as emissaries of God. We have to practice “saying no and yes simultaneously;” denying sovereignty to the power of death, affirming “the authority of life.” (63) The “no” we say to death is simultaneously a celebration of life. (64)

What is this “death” he speaks of? Death is far more than physical demise; it is a moral power, a “social purpose.” (70) Stringfellow, writing in 1973, uses the Vietnam War as his example. Here we have racism, in counting the deaths of Asians less important than those of Americans (71); tactical strategies equating high body counts with victory, and euphemizing “massacre” into “search and destroy”, and genocide as a matter of principle (72). “Smart bombs” meant that soldiers didn’t see their victims dying. Napalm meant poisoning the earth, so people couldn’t hide.

But before Vietnam, there was Hiroshima. Stringfellow asserts that before that August 6, “that war… strategically and technically already had been won.” Therefore, the nation bombed two Japanese cities, just because it could. (75) The spirit of death was victorious there, as it had been before, and continued to be. The existence of war is a sign of the Fall. The difficulty we have in acknowledging that, is even more so.

The principalities and powers, created by God, are also fallen. Stringfellow offers a rare taste of wry humor, here, when identifying other creatures identified with them: “the bear is Russia, the tiger represents Princeton, the donkey the Democratic Party, the pig the police.” (78) Legion, they are, and though created for humankind, they have come to dominate us. None are benign. Even those which can serve well may be aggressive, if you are an African-American male on the wrong side of the legal system. We serve them both in power and in ignorance, and all of us are victims (77-94 passim). Their favorite trick is deception (98-101). The Antichrist, that which is against both God and human life, is in our midst (111).

We appear to be inescapably, thoroughly besieged by demonic powers. What can we do about it? Stringfellow sticks a toe in the waters of hope, by setting this question against the backdrop of the resistance against the Nazis in World War II. Our choice, he says, is to risk the equivalent of capture, imprisonment, torture, and death. The act of resistance to evil is the only way to the preservation of sanity or conscience (118). Not to risk everything, by implication, is to give in to the power of death.

Here, the Bible re-enters the discussion; apparently, a large contingent of the Resistance had been comprised of evangelical Christians. Scripture study had been practiced widely not only by them, but by Jewish participants also. Reading the Bible had been, in itself, “a primary, practical, and essential tactic of resistance.” (120) They read these scriptures together, they talked and thought about them, and the stories became a part of their story as well.
But, alas, not the American churches (121). We have not resisted demonic power; we have enthusiastically participated in it. We are degraded; we were founded by pagans, and we don’t respect our scripture. Our hope, should we have any, can be found in the confessing churches. It is they who appreciate the gifts they have; they, who are “spontaneous, episodic, radically ecumenical, irregular in polity, zealous in living, extemporaneous in action, new and renewed, conscientious, meek, poor,” who can truly live the Gospel (122).

Presumably it is they who best use their spiritual gifts; the character of those gifts would seem to lend itself to Stringfellow’s description of the confessing church. Here, finally, are the tools to resist the power of death. He begins this chapter with a discussion of discernment, of the importance of noticing and appreciating “the remarkable in common happenings,” (138) the power that is given us to speak prophetically and to know the Word of God. Glossolalia is more than what we call “speaking in tongues.” It is ecstatic, spontaneous, truthful, joyful speech. Here is how to construct integrity in worship; this is the gift to use when we are called to rebuke demonic powers. This “liberated witness” is for Stringfellow “the sound of revolution.” (148) The gift of healing is treated with descriptions of the raising of Lazarus. We are called to heal, and thus to witness to the power of Christ to overcome death (148-49). Exorcism has nothing to do with horror movies, and everything to do with burning draft cards, with “exposing the death idolatry of a nation.” (150)

For we live, as Americans, in Babylon. Is there hope for America? No. Is there hope in Christ? Always; in fact, Christ is our only hope. A “no” to America, Stringfellow contends, is a yes to God, and to life (155).

This book appeals to the cynic in me, as it leaves the hopeful idealist searching. I am always one who wants action alerts, postcards to sign, rallies to attend. I didn’t find them here. While I appreciate and agree with Stringfellow’s position on American depravity, I get a little too tired of my own cynicism to comfortably say so. I didn’t feel picked on, for my nationality; I felt frustrated by the depth of greed in our culture. I also wonder, though, if that’s a fact of humanity, and that our particular sin is that we flaunt our consumerism, greed, and militarism without thinking about it. I am flying to New Orleans tomorrow. People have raised money for the four of us to go; a week in the Big Easy is not going to end up costing me very much, materially. I am also very aware that I am going to a city famous for its culture, to work in a disaster zone. I have never been homeless. I have never lost all of my possessions, and the people I most loved, let alone in a single water-logged day. I have never had to take refuge in a crowded, filthy sports stadium. I have not been forgotten by the governmental agencies and insurance companies whose charge it is to protect me. I’ll be there for a week, helping out at a women’s shelter, listening to people’s stories, doing my best to stay clear enough to bring a piece of the presence of God. I’ll fly back here eight days later, to my comfortable grad-student life, where my biggest worry of the moment is one late paper.

This book gave me something to think about, vis-a-vis living humanly, being a truthful, healing presence, in a disaster zone. As a white, middle-class American graduate student, I can’t. As a Christian, maybe I can.

What You Can Do to Help New Orleans

Nineteen months after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, there is still tremendous need for financial donations and volunteer labor. This resource list will be updated periodically. Please click these links, learn what is out there, and give in the ways that are best for you.

Please continue to pray for the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. We saw conditions there that shook us to the core. There are rebuilding efforts, and many signs of hope, but they cannot do it alone. Please pray for strength, healing, and wise leadership. Pray for the healing of emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual wounds. Pray for strong communities. I am writing this on Easter morning; please pray for resurrection.

If you can, please go to New Orleans. I can’t stress this strongly enough. Go for a day, a week, a semester, a season. Go and see the city; if you can, volunteer. You may not think that your brief presence makes a difference—but we found out that it does. Even if you can’t stay long enough to see the fruits of your labor, the experience of serving in this city will change you. You will not see the world, or your place in it, the same way again.

Educational Resources

Indymedia, Katrina page

National Geographic, Katrina Photo Page

National Geographic Special Edition: Katrina (includes "How You Can Help" list of resources)

New Orleans Times-Picayune, Katrina Archive

NPR: Six Months After Katrina

NPR: Katrina, One Year Later

NPR: Katrina and Recovery

Think Progress, Katrina Timeline

This American Life, Katrina Stories

"Immigrants and Hurricane Katrina," ImmigrationProf Blog 4-12-07

"New Orleans Rebirth Depends on Marshes," Dallas Morning News 12/10/05


Donation information and volunteer resources
Many of these organizations welcome volunteers. All welcome financial contributions.

Tulane University School of Social Work, Hurricane Assistance Links

The NOAH Project (Loyola New Orleans Alliance for Hope)

Mercy Corps, Gulf Coast Recovery page (also click the tabs on the left)

Oxfam America, Hurricane Katrina Page

Habitat for Humanity, New Orleans

Episcopal Relief and Development, Hurricane Response Center

Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana, volunteer page

St. Anna’s Episcopal Church, New Orleans
St. Anna's Mission to Musicians, Summary and Outcomes Statement (2006)
We visited while we were there. This church hosts a benefit for musicians every Wednesday night, and has several other free services, including legal and crisis counseling. When I asked the rector what he would have me take back to California, he said, "Peace. Hope. And send us money."

New Orleans Pictures

I’ve finished uploading and organizing my pictures from New Orleans. You can see them here. The set labeled “NOLA” is mainly focused on hurricane and flood damage. The pictures in “NOLA Fun” are mostly of the swamp tour that Judy, Vivian, and I took on Saturday morning.

I think we’re all still processing the trip; I know I am. I went out to lunch with friends after church on Sunday. We were driving through the neighborhood, and I was looking out the window. Suddenly it hit me: no spray paint on the houses! No water marks! The strong foundations and intact houses appeared to be completely out of place. Then I remembered, “Oh yeah. I’m in San Francisco.”

I picked up something called “barotrauma” from the flight home; it’s what happens when you fly when you’re sick, one or both of your eustacian tubes don’t open, and you end up with fluid trapped behind your eardrum. It’s in my left ear, and doesn’t hurt now, but it’s uncomfortable. I’m hearing half-underwater. I called the advice nurse at Kaiser, because this had never happened to me before. She asked how I got it. I answered, “I was in New Orleans….”

She was way more interested in that experience than in my gunky ear, and kept thanking me for going. She said it made her night. I appreciate her thanks; I really do, but it’s kind of surreal. Everyone we met in NOLA thanked us as well. Going down there seemed like an adventure to me before we left; now I’m grateful that I could go, and I wish everyone would. That experience changed me forever. And every little bit of attention or caring helps, whether you’re gutting houses, distributing clothes, or just sitting with people. Praying for them helps. Sending money helps. I think that presence is the best gift of all. If all you can do is witness to the fact that these people exist in these conditions, that is tremendous. They will tell you.

I saw the doctor this morning; my ear is supposed to heal on its own, in “a few weeks.” Meanwhile, I’m developing empathy for hearing-challenged people, and praying that the Sudafed I’m taking works soon.

A blessed Holy Week to all.

Rabbit holes

Michael flew home yesterday afternoon; the rest of us are leaving tonight. Yesterday was our play day. We went to the New Orleans School of Cooking. We had a great time, and were fed very well on crawfish etouffee, shrimp and artichoke soup, bread pudding, and pralines. The chef (Kevin) was a riot; he loved bantering back and forth with us, and he told great stories. It was the most fun I’ve had at lunch in a long time.

We went around the tables and said where we were from, and he asked us what we were doing in New Orleans. People shouted, “touristing,” “eating,” and suchlike. Michael called out, “Gutting houses.”

Kevin stopped us. “What?”
“Gutting houses.”
“Thank you.”

Several locals in the audience also thanked him/us. I felt really proud of Michael for having been able to do that; I have asthma and am rightly afraid of black mold. Vivian, Judy, and I did very worthwhile work here, but what is most clearly and widely needed is house gutting. Many neighborhoods in this city have block after block after block of flood-damaged homes. Kevin cited New Orleans Times-Picayune writer Chris Rose, who writes in his book One Dead in the Attic, “Our city has a bathtub ring around it.” From what we saw, that is literally true.

This exchange got me thinking. Most people, who live in cities that are not prone to hurricanes, and who have safe, sturdy houses, would view teams of strangers coming in and taking their houses apart from the inside, down to the studs, as a shockingly gross invasion. Here, the houses were damaged by being flooded with toxic water for up to six weeks. They have to be taken apart to be saved. There aren’t enough contractors in the city to do what needs to be done here, and most people couldn’t pay for that level of labor anyway. So, volunteers come in with Tyvek suits, respirators, and crow bars, and tear apart houses for free—to preserve the homeowners’ property rights.

You can’t just leave a flood-damaged house indefinitely; there are deadlines. One is coming up in mid-April; I don’t know if that is city-wide or only for the 9th Ward. But if houses aren’t “improved” by the deadlines given, they are condemned. Gutting counts as evidence of improvement.

I understand the issue. But the reality here once again makes my head spin.

We met a group of ABSW students for beignets, afterward; the Baptists had traveled from Berkeley to a town in Mississippi that was literally blown away by Katrina, to build houses with Habitat for Humanity. Then we walked around the park, into the cathedral, and back outside to listen to music. You know you’re in New Orleans when the street musicians are good.

After that, my friends visited a voodoo temple; Michael had met the priestess ten years ago. There was too much incense for me to stay, so I sat outside in the courtyard and called my friend Max, who gave me a piece of wisdom. Max traveled to El Salvador with a group from our church recently. They met Bishop Barahona, worked with children, and I don’t know what all they did there. Max told me, “I was there to do the work, but I was really there to let it change me.” One week is not enough time to save the world, or New Orleans. It is enough time to be changed forever, to be more deeply committed to being the body of Christ, to loving people everywhere, and to raising people’s awareness so that more can be done.

I really feel that I’ve found a piece of my calling. I can’t wait to get home and test it.

Getting it

I figured something out, yesterday. It happened in the course of two phone conversations.

First, I did get to talk to my priest, in between writing yesterday’s entry and posting it. We talked for about 20 minutes, about what it is and was like to be here, what I’m experiencing (and why the hard things are so difficult), and the conversation I’d had with Bill Terry+ at St. Anna’s. Tommy’s really excited about the work that the Diocese of Louisiana is doing. They’ve shifted focus completely away from caring about anybody’s sexuality, and are totally committed to serving the people most affected by Katrina. There are so many great projects happening here.

Hearing that, lit me up. I’d been thinking about how to continue this work at home, and we’re going to talk about it when I get back.

Then at bedtime, I called the Apostle in Exile. I said to her, “I wouldn’t work with this organization again. But I’d come back here, and do this work, in a minute.” Coming here, to this third-world situation in my own obscenely wealthy country, has given me more empathy for all such situations. I’ve always cared. But I’d never felt compelled to go outside of myself, until I’d seen with my own eyes how the poorer people in New Orleans live. Fifteen minutes from the 9th Ward, is the bustling, happy, touristy French Quarter. I have genuinely had a lot of fun there. We’re going back today, to play. But the proximity of these two opposites makes the dichotomy too obvious to miss.

I’m going back tomorrow night, to one paper that’s late already and to a project I’ve just asked for an extension on. I miss my church community more than I miss taking showers, and I’m ready to go back. School right now doesn’t feel real to me at all. The mission bug has bitten me, hard. But coming here is only a small piece of this; it’s essential, but we’re limited to what we can do in one week. I’ll know if I’m truly called to this, if I continue the work at home. I already know that I’m a good organizer. I can’t wait to start experimenting.

Healing

I just finished my last shift at the “orange house,” or women’s shelter, run by Common Ground. I did a little bit of work on their resource database, and hung out with the women there. It was exactly what I wanted to do, on our last work day here.

Yesterday, I worked at the “blue house,” or distribution center; a combined clothing bank, food pantry, and tool library. It was strange to see the levee just a few blocks over; it’s a completely nondescript concrete wall. It doesn’t look imposing. And yet, its presence was in the back of my mind the whole time I was there.

Common Ground workers are staying in one of the houses on this block, and using four others, while their services are needed. (One has a functional bathroom; the other a kitchen, complete with filtered water. Another holds supplies that often end up in the distribution center.) The houses they use are mostly gutted; ubiqutous blue tarps apparently protect them from whatever gunk is still in the walls. One of the women who runs this particular project is a 19-year-old from Olympia. Six or seven years ago, I worked for her mother. We chatted a lot about home.

People come here from all over the country to help. That is deeply encouraging.

We got to go to church last night, at St. Anna’s. One of the women at the orange house told us about it, and we all wanted to go. My rector is friends with the rector there. We really, really, oh, so really—needed the worship. All of us were hungry. And all of us were fed.

I completely fell apart during the service, but it was a good falling-apart. I can’t remember what the hymn was, but there was a whole lot of soul in it. (St. Anna’s uses LEVAS, apparently heavily, and they have a better-than-decent worship band.) It hit me that I’d seen the horror of the effects of this storm, and that had overwhelmed me. Listening to this music, I saw beauty again. People can suffer so much, and still be beautiful. That realization was as wonderful, and as disorienting, as I imagine any resurrection would be. I was an absolute mess.

A woman sitting behind me held my hand as I was crying. I couldn’t go up for Communion or anointing for healing, because of the incense. The priest brought them to me, and my friends stood around me. I don’t quite know how to say how I felt, but it was definitely better.

I sort of feel silly, falling apart as much as I have this week, because this is not my home. It’s not my city; not my life, and I’ve only seen strength, and graciousness, in the people I’ve met who live here. But it’s also good to cry for something bigger than myself. I’m going to do something with these experiences, when I get home. This church has a benefit potluck dinner for musicians every Wednesday, and a free legal clinic, acupuncture, and a couple other services at the same time. I asked the priest, “What would you want me to take back to California with me?” He answered, “Peace. Hope. And send us money.” I’m going to work on that when I get back. I cannot come here and not do something after I leave.

Michael just called; we’re going out to dinner in ten minutes. Time to post this and go. Thank you all for your prayers, your thoughts, and your love. We definitely feel them.

I thought I knew poverty...

I didn’t. I was a Catholic Worker for a year in Olympia, WA. It’s a white, middle-class state capital and college town, with a vocal, active underclass who are still not as poor as they think they are. I thought I knew racism. I worked in non-profits; I was given all the proper diversity trainings, by white, middle-class Olympians. They taught what they knew, and they meant well. I begrudge them nothing. But no amount of repeating, “Power + prejudice = oppression,” equals the experience of three days in Louisiana.

The people in New Orleans are caught, quite literally, between Mother Nature and Big Oil. They have Lake Pontchartrain on one side, connected tenuously to the Gulf of Mexico. The river’s on the other. And down from the river, fed by its delta, are the wetlands, disappearing at a rate of an acre every 33 minutes. That disappearance is accounted for both by efforts to control the river, and oil companies drilling the bayou. Levees prevent the river from changing its course. They help to protect the city from normal, cyclical flooding—they also funnel the silt the river carries directly into open, deep water. If the river were allowed to run, silt would be distributed among the wetlands, keeping them intact, slowly increasing their area. As the wetlands are drilled, they sink, leaving the coast—and the city of New Orleans—ever more exposed.

When a hurricane hits, every three miles of wetlands reduce the category of that storm by one. Katrina had just downgraded to a Category 3 hurricane when it made landfall. It took 43 days to pump New Orleans dry. Half the population of the city has not returned from the evacuation. Without wetlands protection, and with the increase in hurricanes (due partly to global warming), more Category 4 and 5 storms will hit here. Recovery? What’s that?

I was told by one of the women’s shelter coordinators, something about the racism issue that just makes me seethe. The 9th Ward is/was primarily African-American. There is evidence to suggest that some of these levees were blown on purpose, during Katrina. Also, a casino company wanted to raze the houses and build a casino here, protected by a 14-foot levee. The people sued to keep their houses, and won. Essentially to punish them, the destroyed 10-foot levee is being rebuilt. “Sure, you can have your houses. But we’ll leave you with less protection than you need.”

I’m going to have to research that, but it’s easy to believe.

I called a friend in Berkeley last night, from the emergency room at Tulane University Hospital. (We had to take Michael there for a gash in his leg. He’ll be okay.) She’s a tax lawyer. She lives comfortably. But she gets it, and I knew she would. The first thing she asked me was what they could do for me. (Whether she meant she and her partner or the St. Aidan’s community, or both, is beside the point.) “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Pray a lot.” We talked about violence, safety, building in floodplains, and how when I get back, I’m not going to know which of these worlds is Earth and which is Mars. One is so wealthy; the other so poor. I was a self-confessed “poor hippie” in Olympia. I didn’t know what I was talking about. I have choices, and resources, that the poor people of New Orleans couldn’t dream of.

She closed the conversation with, “We love you.” I know they do. And that little bit of humanity, from my other world, meant so much.

We were at the ER from 7 p.m. until about 12:30 a.m. Everyone in there was African-American, but us. Some had obvious emergent injuries. One man left paintbrush-sized swipes of blood on three chairs, from a stab wound in his back. Others appeared to simply need routine health care. One man was vomiting; a family held their coughing infant. A woman cussed out one of the techs; she called security immediately. I finally broke down while they were treating Michael. I haven’t slept well since I got here; I don’t feel safe in the building we’re staying in, and that plus the effects of everything I’m seeing caught up with me.

The night after we got here, we went to get beignets in the Quarter. The next afternoon, we went driving around the 9th Ward, and I took 60 pictures of the neighborhood. (I’m struggling to upload them here; I’ll display them as soon as I can.) I won’t describe them now; I’ll wait until I can show them in context. Yesterday, we spent five hours in the emergency room, and a man came in with a stab wound in his back. What kind of city is this? I don’t know how to make sense of what I’m experiencing. And I know that I can go home. For these people, this is their home. This is their life.

I woke at 3:45 this morning, and broke down sobbing again. My friends took care of me. Judy sat with me, talked to me, prayed with me. Vivian rubbed my shoulder. Michael moved his cot to between me and the door, and held my hand while I lay down, until I was calm. I got up to go to the bathroom, and ended up talking to Roderick, an African-American long-term volunteer from Georgia, who had given us our midnight tour of the building when we first got here on Friday. We talked about poverty and racism. I didn’t know what to do with my outrage, but sharing it helped, and we laughed a little. Then I went back to bed, and slept some. I want to get up and go work—but I’m still so tired. I haven't slept well since I got here.

I need to call my priest; I need to talk about what’s happening here, with someone who is not here anymore, but who knows it well. He’s a native of the area; he left three months after Katrina. I came here thinking I was supposed to share the presence of God. The women at the shelter have more faith than I do, here. They have nothing, materially, but their spirits are strong. All I have the strength to do—all I think I ever could effectively do—is hear their stories, and share them at home.

I said something on the phone to my friend, that she said I needed to write down. I cannot imagine myself, any group I belong to, or anyone I love, being this completely forgotten. (As uneasy as I feel about some aspects of our host organization, they are doing more than FEMA.) I cannot, and will not, ever forget this.

First impressions of New Orleans

We're staying in what was St. Mary of the Angels Catholic school in the 9th Ward, until Katrina. (There are lots of abandoned schools around; literally half of the city hasn't come back after they were evacuated, 19 months ago.) We sleep on cots in the classrooms; the room where our group sleeps currently hosts 18 people.

The shower (there are 4, but two don't have hot water) is a contraption involving propane tanks and PVC pipes. You get the temperature you get; you can't adjust it. Dishes are washed in tubs with soap and bleach, but still manage to feel greasy all the time. We can wash our hands to our hearts’ content, and are encouraged to, but there is nothing to dry them on.

They ask us to work three shifts here, as well as 40 hours/week at our placements. I pulled a security shift from 3-9 this morning. I was on the third floor, where long-term volunteers sleep. During the night, someone tried to break into the refrigerated truck out back, holding our food.

Urban camping is more of a challenge than I was ready for. But the conditions here are not very different from some other places in the neighborhood.

Judy, Vivian, and I worked in a women's shelter yesterday; an average-size house that 17 people call home. I don't know how they do it. I talked for a long time with a cargo worker from the Port of New Orleans, who is staying in the shelter because her second house since Katrina was condemned two weeks ago. She's tried twice to leave, and got sent back by her union (or so I understand). She says that because she’s from New Orleans, she’s having a terrible time finding work at other ports. The city’s reputation for violent crime precedes her wherever she goes. I asked her, “What do you want me to say about New Orleans when I get home?” Her answer: “Get the troops out of Iraq, and bring them here. This is a war zone.”

She was essentially calling for martial law. I am very uncomfortable with that entire idea—but this is not my city, not my home. I don’t have the right to make decisions about what happens here. I can use my voice to amplify the voices of the people who live here; that is what I am doing.

I went to get a glass of water, and the "cold" tap didn't work—but the "hot" only had cold water running out of it. I was told that one of the bathrooms only had hot water. The residents only use the upstairs toilet, because the downstairs one doesn't work. Someone said that's typical; there's sea water underneath the city, messing with the pipes. They can't fix it, because there's not enough money to do that kind of work in the city.

We three will be back at the shelter tomorrow; they want me at 7 a. m. to ride with people on the bus to the walk-in clinic that opens at 8. Apparently it's a 15-minute bus ride, but the buses come at odd intervals that nobody can figure out. There are not enough mechanics to fix them when they break down, which is often, on these pothole-covered streets. They come when they can. And last time, 30 people waited in line for the clinic to open; only the first 9 were seen.

Michael, the only one in our group who's been here before, took us to Café du Monde for beignets last night. It was a bustling, happy place, full of sugar and laughter. We walked around the Quarter for awhile, wandering into shops, looking at monuments, feeling the history. It was busy, brightly lit, and filled with other gawkers just like us. They were filming a TV pilot in the park. That's one of the strange things about this: working in a disaster area, and then going out to a different neighborhood, playing tourist, having fun.

My task today is to begin telling as many people as I can, what is happening here. I'll upload pictures later.