‘We are stronger than wind and oil’
By Fr. Jeremy Tobin, O.Praem.
August 20, 2010
The other night on CNN the weather person was talking about hurricanes. A big tropical depression was forming off the Lesser Antilles and it could turn into a hurricane, but it was too soon to plot a course.
She went on to say the peak of the hurricane season was from August to October. We have record heat. The heat index tells you just how bad it is. Jackson is opening cooling shelters. The heat is page one.
Katrina hit at the end of August. It was near the time the Norbertines celebrate the feast day of St. Augustine, their founder. He is the founder of all the clergy living life in common.
We all remember the day Katrina hit. It is etched in our minds. The scars still slice the coast. The 24-hour news channels are asking what is the state of Katrina recovery today? Parts of our coastal towns still lie vacant. Little cement stairs can still be found climbing to nowhere. But all that is unimportant because physical things get rebuilt or replaced. Life goes on.
I still reflect on the people. Whether it is an anniversary of Katrina or the BP oil spill, what about the people? Casinos on the Gulf look as if nothing ever happened, what about the people?
For a few years now up in Carthage at St. Anne, otherwise known as Iglesia Catolica Santa Ana, we have been praying a prayer for protection from hurricanes.
We tweaked it a bit for protection from the spreading oil. We call the Gulf of Mexico, holy. We call the marshlands, the bayous, the oyster beds, the whole ecosystem, holy. All our technology cannot create that. We are not sure that we can repair it. Every bit of good news that we receive we attribute to faithfully reciting this prayer.
This time of year, for us, we put ourselves in God’s hands. The news tells us about businesses coming back. There is not much news about the people unless they are trying to tell their story, the real story, to some reporter, who advocates for the people.
These are hard times. A chicken plant is cutting back to four days. That means less pay. Benefits, what there are, are few. The people go to work determined to make it. “Pray for us” somebody said. “It is hard. But God can make a way out of no way.”
A young twentysomething Haitian woman struggling to care for her family, still asks, “What does God want with us?” I have not heard anybody answer her question. The people are tough. They are used to hard times. They know what it is to struggle in Mississippi.
We don’t need platitudes because that is rubbing salt in the wounds. We need to stand in solidarity, to stand with the people, to listen to the people.
Christianity was born in a time of persecution. Struggle has been a part of its genes. Our central tenet of faith boils down to death, destruction, and resurrection, rebirth.
Our families struggling at that chicken plant, our families on the coast struggling to rebuild a fishing industry, homes and towns still scarred from Katrina are living it out.
The shrimpers and the oystermen, the fishermen and the deck crews, the processor and the packers, come weary to the door of the church every Sunday to hear “Take this and eat it. This is my body broken for you. Take this cup and drink from it. This is the cup of my blood, poured out for you.”
This is the source of their strength to keep getting up, to keep on going back to those marshes and struggle to clean them. This is the strength that keeps them going back to those chicken plants. This is the strength of endurance, of recovery, of resisting the mighty winds that may come.
(Fr. Jeremy Tobin, O. Praem. lives at the Priory of St. Moses the Black, Jackson.)
TOBIN ARCHIVES |
