Time to let it go

Late in August 2005, our Governor called a mandatory evacuation as Hurricane Katrina churned in the Gulf of Mexico. We Casseroles complied, packing up the cats, computers, prescription meds and a few changes of clothing for the four of us.

Mr. C. and our Lovely Son returned with Gray Cat to our home after the storm. LD and I drove up the East Coast to stay with my LLS and LSiL.

I had enough clothing with me to last for a few days. The Aunts have fancier laundry equipment than most of the U.S. and were generous to us to use what they had to make us comfortable. For LD, this meant raiding their pantry for Oreo cookies (not a common food in our home) and eating Doritos all over the house.

After a week or so, I realized that needed to borrow a few shirts because I'd grown tired of the shirts in my suitcase. LSiL offered me a few of her Talbot's golf shirts, perfect for the September heat.

I love wearing her clothes. My LLS wears beautiful clothes, but somehow the beautiful clothing of my LSiL wows me. Maybe I think I'll become tall and elegant if I wear her things.

She loaned me an aqua Talbot's golf shirt. Weeks later when I packed to return to the Coast, I asked her if I might take the shirt home with me. She agreed.

For the past, almost 5 years, I've worn her aqua Talbot's golf shirt about every ten days or so, year round.

Tonight, after I returned from a long day of church work and then checking on our College Boy (LS), I came home to eat Mr.C's spaghetti with italian sausange sauce for supper. I'd changed from my preacher clothes to the aqua shirt and yoga pants to signal I was HOME and OFF-DUTY. We talked over the day and after eating, I began to clean up the kitchen.

I looked down at my aqua shirt and thought I saw a spaghetti stain up near the collar. I peered closer realizing I have another hole in the fabric. At year three of wearing the shirt, a hole appeared in the shoulder seam. Later, a paint stain appeared on the front hem. The button placket is wearing away from the shirt. I've paid no attention to these signs of aging. The golf shirt is aqua still, very soft and fits loosely allowing me to do everything in it except wear it out in public.

Thinking about this new hole prompts me to wonder if it is time to put it in the Rescue Mission bag. Probably not, because I try to give them reputable clothing. Their shoppers need better items. Cut it up to use as one of my silver polishing cloths? Sounds good.

It is time to let it go, with a grateful heart for the hospitality offered to me and my LD by LLS and LSiL, just when we needed it most.

Yours,

St.Casserole

Third Katrina Anniversary

Reprint for the 3rd Anniversary of Katrina


Rewriting the History of August 29th : A Prayer

Thank you for letting me understand homelessness,
living without power, without television ,
without cool air in the heat.

Thank you for letting me understand hunger,
the pleasure of dry clean clothes
and the relief of place to sleep.

Thank you for letting me understand
the deep and overwhelming sadness when forces,
beyond our personal control,
take the loved, the familiar, the usual.

Thank you for my needfulness
andThank you for my newfound empathy
for those were homeless before the storm and homeless now,
for those hungry anywhere,
for those in need everywhere.

Thank you for the opportunity
you provided to help my neighbor,
to be my brother’s keeper,
to serve food, to patch roofs, to clear yards,
and to start mending that which was broken.

Thank you for the chance to change ourselves,
from a reprieve from the normal commercial day,
for teaching us to make do, to get by, to improvise,
for drowning our conceit, complacency, callousness
for silencing the noise ,
for stopping the clock,
and for the chance to act our best when the worst occurred.

Thank you for the people who reached in pulled out the living,
cradled the dead, comforted the broken and torn apart,
wept for the splintered and uprooted.

Thank you for the people who didn’t wait
who came right away, who opened their homes,
who emptied their shelves, their closets,
who cleaned, fed , healed, held us,
who told us our spirit was amazing,and who keep on coming.

Thank you for people who measure
their faith by their actions,
and measure their action
by its consistency with their faith.

Thank you for all the people we have met,
who are new friends, new loved ones,
new brothers and sisters, new neighbors.

Thank you Katrina.
Not for wind,not for water, but for the appreciation
of the things no storm can shatter,
no water can wash away,
no wind can move.

---Written by R. and Mr. C

If you wish the correct attribution, email me and I will respond.

St. Casserole

Former President Jimmy Carter and Mrs. Carter are down here to build houses for Habitat for Humanity. The plan is to build new homes, re-hab homes and prepare pre-fab parts for building later. Volunteers converged from everywhere to work.

The Rev. Mr. Bird Dog is leading devotions for the group.


Thanks, President and Mrs. Carter, for helping us.


St. Casserole

Our friend, Rev. Books, has a new appointment HOURS FROM HERE. He'll MOVE in June to a great parish. BUT THIS MEANS HE WILL NO LONGER DRINK COFFEE WITH US ON TUESDAYS. He's been our calm and intelligent colleague for years in the Preacher Coffee Drinking Group Every Tuesday.

I will sure miss him.

He's the one who stayed with his people, despite all miseries, after Katrina. He took care of survivors, grieved the lost and cared about the community with such fierce devotion that no one will ever forget him who lived through those terrible days.

Mr. C. loses a golf partner. I lose a compassionate pal who understands if a gal is depressed or doing well and treated me with respect regardless of my mental state.

We will miss him.

When you think of a pastor who exegeted his community so that he could provide ministry, think of Rev. Books.

We met Tuesday to eat shrimp po-boys at Lil' Ray's. It's not our last meal together but each time we meet, I know we are counting down until he moves north.

I'm happy for his new appointment. He will be a blessing to them. I'm happy we kept him for this long since his system does this weird thing of uprooting and moving preachers every few years.

He says he'll begin blogging. My goal is to see him as a full member of the RGBPs.

Yours,


St. Casserole

The Mayor of Contiguous City declared this week that seven more years are needed to recover from Katrina. The first two years were clean-up the debris years. The third and fourth years are re-build the infrastructure and the next six would be building housing and businesses.



Imagine what it is like to be a pastor down here.




The debris may be cleaned up in most places but not all. People's spirits and sense of themselves are fractured still. Admits to the psych hospital, behavioral programs and, even the medical hospitals are up. What is inside comes out.




You may be exhausted with my story of life here. I imagine I seem to be mewing endlessly.



My work is nurturing pastors and caregivers around me. This is what I do until I can't face people myself.



St. Casserole, counting the days until the BE

Many, many thanks to those of you who sent donations for Little Church. I'm in the dark about who you are unless you've told me. I do know that your response is generous.

We are ready to start with repairs. We don't have all the money we need but we are beginning.

Thank you!

Love,

St. Casserole

2 Years 5 Months 13 Days after Katrina

Here's what I've heard since Friday:

I've gained 25 lbs. since the Storm. I guess we were denied for so long that we keep "treating" ourselves. ---BSL resident

We've had another "Katrina Spike" at the hospital. ---hospital administrator

I went to the Coast. I can't go back, it's too sad. How can you live there? ---lawyer upstate

I can't cry. I can't eat. My stomach hurts. ---friend

I know I have PTSD. I just try to go on with it. ---friend

This is my life and the life of those around me for miles and miles. Everyday, we cope with the aftermath. The above comments aren't complaints. Just stating the facts.

St. Casserole

2 years, 4 months, 14 days

Where the walls separated from the building.
More wall damage. The silver rectangle above the fuse box is a strap to hold the wall to the building frame.
Same here.
More damage here.
When the roof was replaced, the work was shoddy. All we could find. Can't call them back to fix where water runs down the walls into the building. Roofing company left town.

We received 1/10 th of what we requested to repair our sanctuary building from all the donations people sent to our denomination. We have enough money, we hope, for enough materials to make repairs but no money for labor. Costs for labor and materials are much higher than before the hurricane.

We have requested help from presbytery but no one helps. We get referred from one person to another.

I am sad about this. We need skilled people to help us. We need to make repairs. People have been so generous but we were told that our repairs would be taken care of. We were told this over and over. We are waiting.

We are not stupid or lazy. We are a small church, the only church not yet repaired in our presbytery.

I am beside myself and wake up in the night worrying about the building.

St. Casserole

I heard another story about hurricane recover today. A business was blown away by the storm. Qualifying for SBA low interest loans, they applied for help to rebuild their building, replace equiptment, etc. on September 30, 2005. Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005.

Yesterday, January 9, they received word that their loan had been approved.


Let that sink in a sec.


I said, "Why has it taken so long?" One wonders how most business can keep on all these months without any of the help the SBA intends to offer. I guess many business people have given up and lost their businesses. I was told that more than 15 different SBA loan people worked on their case. Everytime the business made an inch of progress toward satisfying the loan people, their person would leave the SBA and another person would take over the file.


Tell me again how we are all back to normal down here. Tell me again how the world has moved on and that we are all doing fine.

St. Casserole

Remembering Katrina 2007

Two years ago today, we were in Destin waiting for word about the Gulf Coast. News of the Coast was scarce because the news people couldn't get to Mississippi. We saw where Katrina's eye came ashore later in the morning. Cell phone and land line calls did not work as we tried to call our friends who stayed in their homes.

We didn't know that our hurricane preparations made no difference. Boarding up Mr. C's law firm building (an old Coast home restored and used for less than ten months) was destroyed. So many trees fell around our home that it could not be seen from the street. P. and C.'s home flooded. Our pediatrician's home flooded. Many of our neighbor's homes were flooded, broken by trees or blown away. Our sailboat ended up miles away. People died because they refused to evacuate or would not leave their pets.

Who knew anything? We didn't. Scenes of New Orleans on the news showed misery. Little did we know that the levees would break and ruin the City Care Forgot.

Little did we know that churches were demolished, roads torn up and our lives changed forever.

Regular people suffered extreme misery.

We kept close to the tv in the Destin condo.

Andy, Assumpta and Dibley ran around meowing. LD and LS tried to text message their friends. Mr. C. and I held on.

Remembering,

St. Casserole

Here's the view we saw Sunday afternoon of the Pass Christian harbor.
We drove along the beach highway to the new BSL bridge. It's durn remarkable to see this giant bridge re-built in less than two years. Two more lanes will open in the coming months. BSL shows areas of recovery, then places so pitiful that you wonder how the residents can stand living there.*

We stopped at the Mockingbird Cafe for a sandwich but the kitchen closed earlier in the afternoon. I stared at the table where I sat with Songbird when she visited. Outside on the porch, I looked at the will smama table confused that someone else sat there. Go home and get your own table! That one is the will smama table, girlfriend!

Traveling back toward home, we stopped at Shaggy's in Pass Christian. Sitting on the breezy deck beach side while listening to music made me feel NORMAL for the first time in months, maybe almost two years.

Look out to the Gulf and the beach, things look normal. Not touched by a killer hurricane. Look to the north and you see signs of ravaged homes, broken riprap and destruction.

Felt like a vacation,

St. Casserole

This is a picture of Pearlington, Ms. hard hit by Hurricane Katrina. A group from Kansas came to Pearlington to help rebuild the town. Got that? This group lives near the tornado devastation in Greenburg, Kansas. They came to help us.

LS and Lovely Friends left yesterday afternoon driving to Greenburg, Kansas to build a house for a family left homeless by the tornado. The new house will be wind strong to 200 mile an hour wind, highly insulated to lower heating/cooling costs, quiet and termite-proof. The home is made of green materials. Lovely friends are donating the home.

I love this example of what goes around comes around. We are connected in mysterious ways to strangers who become friends. I see God working.

Love,

St. Casserole

Oh the joy! Oh the relief!

This week is just about over!

Our boy is home from France safely!

Our hurricane disaster work is changing directions for the better!

I have workers here fixing my roof and fence and etc!

Can you believe that? Workers! Here! Repairing hurricane damage!

We may even find a plumber to repair the gas leak outside at the old greenhouse!

I am very happy! See me dancing!

Jubilate,

St. Casserole

That's What I'm Talking About....

It will take years,

St. Casserole