June 2006
Sister Elizabeth and I recently returned from New Orleans, our first visit there since Hurricane Katrina.
Our own house, the Cenacle Retreat House on the lakefront in Metairie, was spared major damage. Unlike other parts of town — Lakeview and St. Bernard Parish in particular— most buildings in our neighborhood look unchanged — except that the street is lined with FEMA trailers, so you know the houses were flooded and are unlivable.
One day Sisters Rosalie, Elizabeth, and I drove to Pass Christian, Mississippi, where Sister Rosalie’s family home was located before Katrina. The house was completely destroyed by the storm surge. Now when you walk where the house used to be, you see not only beach poppies and Easter lilies sprouting in the sandy soil, but also spoons and forks and pieces of broken china. The Pass Christian town center is made up primarily of trailers housing banks, library, and city government.
For a good part of the next day I felt like weeping, and my stomach was upset — a delayed reaction to the hundreds of miles of devastation we had seen the day before. I can only try to imagine what it is like for the people who live with it every day, for whom wreckage is the new normalcy. Listening to some of them, I had the impression of a citizenry that had survived a war, with the resulting damage to property and wounds to the psyche.
While we were there, the Times-Picayune printed an article about modern-day “carpetbaggers,” who, after first looting the damaged houses in New Orleans, are now back, stealing shutters, doors, and other historic architectural elements. And this week the National Guard has been called back in, following the murders of five teenagers and an adult.
Where is goodness amid the destruction?
We had just gotten out of the car at the empty lot where Sister Rosalie’s family home had been when a man stopped to ask us if we needed help.
“No,” we said, pointing to Sister, “she’s just come to see the old homestead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” was his reply, full of understanding and sympathy.
Simple acts of kindness have abounded, although the crimes, true to the pattern of the news media, have received more attention.
Less than two months after the storm, Daniel P. Aldrich, writing on the Jewish web site, aish.com, said:
In explaining what happened to us, I have sought to show my children that our losses provided us with a chance to experience chesed — kindness — from others…
Aldrich added that the experience of Katrina “has reinforced our belief in the innate goodness and kindness not only of Jews but of the American people as a whole”; and he goes on to tell about an incident in Atlanta, when he was trying to buy gas and having trouble with his credit card.
As a nearby woman heard my wife and me talking with the sales clerk about leaving New Orleans, she walked up, smiled, and said, “I want to give you this.” In her hand was a winning lottery ticket and her collected earnings. … This was one of the myriad of kindnesses showered upon us by strangers, friends, and family alike.
Goodness is found, too, in the courage of people carrying on with life amid the pain. In the neighborhood of the Cenacle, residents tend their lawns, mowing around the FEMA trailers. In Pass Christian, the townspeople rejoice over the opening of their new trailer library.
Life goes on.
My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
. . . . . . . . . .
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.(Psalm 42:6-7, 11)