By Todd Donatelli
Like most who visit New Orleans, its identity for me was defined by the French Quarter: the food, the music, the funky vibe of walking the streets. For seven years we lived three hours from the Crescent City, two and half if you didn’t stop. Becky and I spent several anniversaries there with a common agenda: wake up to a leisurely courtyard breakfast, walk the streets, eat lunch, head to antique shops for more walking, eat dinner, and walk the streets some more. The walking was a feeble attempt to balance the amount of calories consumed (forgot to mention the stops at Café du Monde for beignets). On other trips we took our children and widened the experience with the Children’s Museum and Aquarium.
It was only after Katrina that I saw the rest of New Orleans. The first glimpses were the people who took refuge in Asheville immediately after the levee breaks. They were of all socio-economic backgrounds. They had children needing to be in school. Some had aging parents with them. They were all gypsies seeking to navigate, let alone comprehend, the turn their lives had taken.
One of the “resident alien” New Orleans families attended All Souls from August until December 27. They did not just attend. Active in their home parish (one was a Warden at the time), they participated in EFM so as not to lose ground with their course work, participated in fellowship and other education offerings, and never missed a Sunday (better attendance than even the Dean). They did this while working to keep their jobs going back home, getting their kids in school, and working to keep their home parish going. They have remained ‘extended members’ of our church and a human connection to a story full of much political and social opportunity.
They were also the ones who took us through our first visit to New Orleans post-Katrina. All Souls was sending groups to the Mississippi coast. On one trip we ventured down I-10 to have dinner with them and see the city. They had been home for a few months.
The drive into the city drive was like some 1950s sci-fi movie. Unlike the horror of the Mississippi coast which was leveled by Katrina, New Orleans’ damage was primarily flood. Thus, one drove by buildings which were standing, yet empty. One saw apartments and shopping malls basically intact with empty parking lots as far as the eye could see; neighborhood after neighborhood, which from the interstate appeared intact, with no people or movement. It was surreal.
As we exited the interstate and drove along the streets, a severe silence overtook the van. Our friend described aspects of the devastation and the contexts of the neighborhoods. There was still no electricity in most of the flooded areas, no working stop lights, no working street lights. The debris of the yards and streets offered faint suggestions of the internal debris of those who once lived there.
I recall being on an elevated bridge that evening taken aback by the patchwork of city light: large squares full of street and home lights connected to other large squares of total darkness.
After that visit we began sending groups to work in New Orleans. Our trips were planned through the Episcopal Diocese relief office. An amazing community of diocesan staff, college age interns, and local Episcopalians provided hospitable accommodations and carefully, thoughtfully organized work opportunities. Many of these folks were themselves dealing with damaged homes, families and churches.
One family who had taken temporary refuge in Asheville brought us a worksite lunch of New Orleans Po-Boys: muffuletas, fried oysters and even a vegetarian option (New Orleans is not renowned for of its vegetarian cuisine). We slept at St. Paul’s, gathered each day for work assignments at St. Andrew’s and spent Wednesday nights at St. Anna’s for a meal accompanied by the sounds of local jazz bands. St. Anna’s had received a grant to pay for the jazz groups whose income was devastated by the flood: creativity amid the ruins.
Each morning we were briefed on the home to be worked on, given appropriate backgrounds on the persons who had lived there, and given contexts of that neighborhood. Sometimes we met those who had lived in the homes, other times we knew them only by the pictures and photo albums found inside.
We were scheduled in a different neighborhood each day in order to give us a broad understanding of the issues and complexity of the city. Neighborhoods like Gentilly, Lakeview, the 9th Ward, Chalmette, New Orleans East, and St. Bernard were not places I knew before these trips. Now they are etched in memory. Now there are faces connected to names. Whenever news reports of Katrina appear, they are no longer stories about “those folks” but of friends and those we met.
One need not gloss over the issues of New Orleans. Like many cities, their social issues have come through years of choices. Having grown up in Chicago in the 50s, 60s and 70s, names like Cabrini Green are not the ones we Chicagoans lead with when telling you about our home town.
As I watch the reports of the 5th anniversary of Katrina, I hear of issues faced and improved and many issues still with ‘miles to go’ before they will find their rest. As with any work of this scale there will be progress and setbacks. Certainly the spirits of those who live there did not need an oil spill as part of this journey.
Watching and reading the reports, I find myself grateful to have had relationship with the myriad of folks who live there and invited us in. I am grateful to have been allowed to observe their personal journeys with the city and their place in it. Their journey continues.
Dostoevsky said beauty will save us. I believe that. I also believe incarnation saves us; saves us from objectifying, saves us from removed identification, saves us from making judgments of people and groups without being present with and to them. Incarnation is costly. It requires a letting go of distant safety. It requires looking into one another’s eyes.
When I think about it, I am rarely converted simply by reading things. I am converted by human beings.
The Very Reverend Todd Donatelli is dean of The Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, North Carolina. His published writing includes the chapter, “Art and Transformation” in “From Nomads to Pilgrims”, edited by Diana Butler Bass and Joseph Stewart-Sicking. He blogs at Contemplation from the Angle.