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Katrina Reflections
AFTERMATH OF KATRINA
On August 29, 2005 Katrina dealt a blow to us that at first glance was something we could deal with. She swept across lower Plaquemines parish here in Louisiana dead centered on the Buras-Triumph communities just a scarce 14 miles from the end of Highway 23 at the mouth of the Mississippi River. When we finally were able to go home and inspect our communities, we discovered that the damage far exceeded our fears. It was wide spread across the entire Gulf coast from Louisiana into parts of Alabama.
I speak for those in diaspora. I speak for those who identify with a Babylonian exile or slavery in Egypt. The longing to return home, the desire to be restored permeates our soul , even to the core of our being.
Many people ask, “Why do you want to go back?” We simply answer,”Because it is our home.” For many of us the wetlands are home by choice. For others this is home because this is where we wound up after being pushed and shoved from more desirable places . This has been home for those of us whose ancestry goes back to Native roots, slave roots, displaced Acadian roots. We are the displaced as well as those who have chosen to identify with the dispossessed and the displaced. Our ancestors came here and developed our communities and our lifestyle. The tombs of our grandfathers and grandmothers were ravaged by the Katrina waters. We are the new immigrants with names that reflect Honduras and Mexico, names that reflect the rice paddies of Viet Nam. Our loss is the loss of the blessings and accumulation from a new life in a new land. It was wiped away in a flash just as effectively as if a bomb had hit us. There are those among us who have no recourse nor resources to rebuild because some of us are renters, some of us don't speak English, and some of us don't even have the proper paperwork to be here.
We lost our memories as recorded in photo albums, home movies, etc. We lost our clothing, our tools, our kitchens, our cooking pots, our chinaware, our rugs, our vehicles. Some of us were able to receive meager insurance benefits. But as a group our loss far exceeds any insurance pay offs. We also lost our means to make a living by the devastation of our fishing fleet. Our top priority is- GETTING OUR FISHING FLEET BACK IN THE WATER so that our men can go back to work.
Our people survived slavery, war, and racism. It remains to be seen if we can survive Katrina and Rita. We believe that we can.
We are your brothers and sisters. We want you to know that we deeply appreciate everything you have done for us. We understand the meaning of a cup of cold water offered in love.
All we want is to be able to go home.
Katrina
by: Robert O. Zehr
Katrina struck us --a backhand blow.
She ripped roofs and trees and surged a tide leveling our homes
She hung a tricycle high in a branch
And splattered a squirrel on the road below
The cries of her babies are drowned by the wind blown blast
Shrieking danger from a shredded nest ruined on the rain soaked grass.
A dead horse is draped high in a Live oak tree
Joined by a delivery truck perched like a bird on a broken limb
And a casket freed from a watery tomb
Bounces eerily down to sea.
We return to our homes -shredded, torn, dreams hung on a dead oak
Our past in a casket floating southward toward Cancun
The cries of baby squirrels are an echo now
Which haunts our nightmares
And our songs which hung muted on the willows in this strange land
Are awakening to a new reality --storm-birthed by Katrina's stroke.
Light House Mennonite Fellowship is located in Triumph, LA along the Mississippi
The river takes a bend in this area and runs west to east in front of the church. This picture was taken on the highway in front of the church at 8:01 PM April 18, 2007 and three things are notable:
1. Sunset has just occurred at 7:26 PM. The colors are fading fast to the west.
2. The moon, which was new moon just one day before, will
set at 9:16 PM
3. Venus, higher in the sky, will set at 10:14 PM.
The barren stripped trees silhouetted against the sky are
Katrina damage.
Photographer: Robert O. Zehr
I use an placeOlympus 500 Evolt SLR Digital Camera.
Our Souls Swept Out to Sea
by Robert O. Zehr
We are the seed of slaves who wrested this Beulah Land from the fetid swamp
The craftsmen who sweated the bricks and shaped your walls
Who slashed the cane and milled its sweetness for your coffee
Down along the bayous and the gator holes
We sleep to the drone of malaria
We live where you wouldn't live.
But there in our cabins we breathe free
There our souls sing the songs of freedom.
Our fathers are the red men who peered out through the palmettoes
Who moved off the best land when our women and children were threatened
We backed into that no man's swamp
And the world let us claim it
Until progress discovered black gold beneath our huts
And denied our children books and chalk
But the great Spirit taught us from his storehouse
The lessons of nature and wisdom beyond this primordial mud
In this unwanted place we regained our souls
We are the issue of the hated in a land across the sea
Who braved that sea to a new world
Who built homes in a promised land-- a New Acadia
Only to discover hatred had followed like a stray dog
Persecuted we moved
Scattered along the new world's coast .
We were shoved and pushed until we joined other hardy souls
In a swamp that no one wanted
We are the Cajuns
Our souls are bound to the bayous, tides and the mighty cypress touching heaven.
We are the new immigrants
We are of Hispanic ancestry from Carribean shores
We invested our lives in a dream
We are the new immigrants from the rice paddies of Vietnam
We bring our skills, our hopes and our crushed souls to be nurtured in this new place
A place where our souls can blossom and live again.
Our collective dreams have soured into a nightmare
A bad dream called Katrina, A horror called Rita
Our homes and our livelihoods wrestled from the swamp by our forefathers
Paid for with sweat and tears
Vanished in a moment as the winds and the waters snatched them away
As they swept to sea, our souls drowned with them
We are the forgotten, a people without a soul. Diaspora is our name.
Psalms 19:1-6 (NIV)
1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.
Psalms 19:1-14 (MSG)
1 God's glory is on tour in the skies, God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.
2 Madame Day holds classes every morning, Professor Night lectures each evening.
3 Their words aren't heard, their voices aren't recorded,
4 But their silence fills the earth: unspoken truth is spoken everywhere. God makes a huge dome for the sun-a superdome!
5 The morning sun's a new husband leaping from his honeymoon bed, The daybreaking sun an athlete racing to the tape.
6 That's how God's Word vaults across the skies from sunrise to sunset, Melting ice, scorching deserts, warming hearts to faith.
7 The revelation of God is whole and pulls our lives together. The signposts of God are clear and point out the right road.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89).
God's Grandeur
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
The Starlight Night
LOOK at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!-
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then!-What?-Prayer, patience, aims, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.
1 Corinthians 15:50-58 (NKJV)
50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.
51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed--
52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory."
55 "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?"
56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work
the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
LOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare 5
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ' nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest ' to her, her clearest-selvèd spark 10
Man, how fast his firedint, ' his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig ' nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, ' death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark 15
But vastness blurs and time ' beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, ' joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. ' Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; ' world's wildfire, leave but ash: 20
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
Explore more information on Hopkin's poetry below:
http://www.bartleby.com/122/ (Scroll down to Index of titles of GMH poetry)