Monday, October 20, 2008

New Orleans

Sadly, new hurricanes have moved public attention finally away from New Orleans.  I have just returned from a trip there doing some rebuilding work and discovered that they need not be forgotten down there in Katrina-land.  Before the trip I had heard many things about that city: sin-city, a disgusting city full of messed up people that God was cleaning up, and people asking why they even return to New Orleans: why not just move to another home?

First, I can say that the work in NOLA is far from over.  I was in a small neighborhood of only about a dozen homes nestled pratically underneath an overpass.  Next to an abandoned NOLA Police storage yard and a busy set of train tracks sits a row of homes, one of which is owned by a man named Troy.  Because this home belonged to his great aunt at the time of Katrina, who passed away three months after the storm and bequeathed it to Troy, he is unable to get any government assistance in rebuilding.  It's the kind of neighborhood that you would dump a body: in fact our first day there a news van pulled up asking for information on a body that had been found the day before down the road.  Another home on his street is completely rebuilt, two others have clearly not been visisted since the storm.  Who knows whether their owners perished or left and haven't returned.

Troy and his neighborhood have fallen off the map (in fact Google Maps had a hard time finding his street) and fallen through the loopholes of government aid.  The remaining work is for them, the forgotten.

So is New Orleans a disgusting city of sin?  I find that all generalizations are dangerous, as Alexander Dumas once quipped.  There are many devoted and real people living there, loving culture and life and working hard to make ends meet day to day.  The church in NOLA is rebuilding and growing.

So why don't people just pack up and close down the city?  Troy took us to his Lutheran church while we were working on his home.  A beautifully rebuilt church of about 250 (it was 500 before Katrina), Troy was immediately greeted by nearly every member upon entering the Oktoberfest party.  A jazz band was playing, old men were grilling bratwurst, and everyone was drinking beer and having a merry time.  As he recounted to us the history of the church (over 150 years) and the history of relationships, I realized that Troy knew every person there, and every person knew him.  They were a family.  One tight-knit family of 250 people.  The truth is that no one wants to leave home.  New Orleans is not just a city, it is a family.  The love that the citizens have for their city and for each other is remarkable: few cities can boast of such a thing.

The work continues in NOLA, and elsewhere that disaster has struck.  Disasters serve as a constant reminder that we are not in control of this world - despite our gains in strength and power and ability, we still can't stop a hurricane.  But neither can a hurricane stop us.