Another World

I’m in New Orleans, at a conference on stewardship. Or rather, I was in New Orleans – I’m now at a rural retreat center in Southern Louisiana. This is layering on different experiences, and I can’t keep up.

Yesterday, I worked on a crew to gut one of the small houses in New Orleans’ 9th ward. The Episcopal church in New Orleans is one of several groups bringing in volunteers to work. In some cases, volunteers are stripping houses down to the studs so that the reconstruction process can begin. In many cases, volunteers are stripping houses to find that there’s not enough structure to save, but it helps the family come to closure about the past and what decisions now lie before them. It is foul, difficult, sacred work.

We try very hard to honor the family whose home we gut, as well as the neighbors. This is incarnational ministry, and it changes those of us who come to it. In many cases, the houses have been undisturbed since the flood – the owners have simply been unable to face them. In our case, the homeowner had died in the months after Katrina, and we were working on behalf of her sons. As we entered the house, it was clear that she although she did not die in the flood, what remained broke her heart.

We tore out a little piece of hell yesterday. We took out a jumbled, mildewed mess that had been a home. It included photographs, letters, clothing, beds, furniture, crumbled walls, ruined appliances, ceiling tile that had simply dissolved all over everything. The sky was visible through the roof, and the spongy floor gave glimpses of the ground below. I’m sure this house was no place I’d have wanted to live before the storm, but it was a home to a family for several generations, and after Hurricane Katrina, it has kept them from living and moving forward.

I made a mistake, which actually brought me into this a little closer. We had stacked the rubble carefully so that nails were not exposed. Late in the day we were joined by a FEMA-sponsored contractor to remove the mountains of trash and rubble, and a large board got flipped. I was backing a wheelbarrow of rubble along what had been a clear path, and felt a huge nail slide right through the bottom of my shoe and into my foot. Oh, this was not good. It slid right back out. I was so disgusted with myself – I’d been so careful all day!

I’ve now had a tetanus shot, and I’m on turbo-antibiotics, and a doctor has tortured me in survivable ways. My friend Marty came by to witness the fun and keep me company. Now I’m in the company of a bunch of really great priests and lay leaders and my friend Julie, and I’m looking forward to what today will bring. But I will be watching where I walk.