Rebuilding

I just received this email from my good friend and former boss. It was addressed to many of the people outside of Mississippi who are coming into the state to try to help individuals with disabilities, particularly the individuals who are deaf and deafblind. She is one of the rocks of the state who is involved with systems change and really making a difference in the lives of individuals who have disabilities.
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To all - I've been silent on this issue for awhile, confused myself on how to explain the reality of the situation from my perspective. Unsure of how to describe things. Even hesitant to give an opinion on what might be next steps to possible solutions. For those who know me, silence and opinions being held back are not my normal behavior.

I live in Gautier with a home for sale in Hattiesburg and have been trying to stand on my own feet, help my family and my neighbors in both communities who got knocked off their feet, and then (while still quite wobbly) get back to work and meet some immediate responsibilities (work at the university in Hattiesburg, not Long Beach where I had just settled in).

Difficulty standing and walking a straight line back to work is true of any of the Mississippi "service providers", or people knowledgeable about services, who live in the wake of Katrina. But people are rising to their feet and beginning to walk and facing the same frustrations of many of you who came from outside the state to help.

As I began studying the efforts down here of Red Cross, Salvation Army, multitudes of "emergency relief teams" and FEMA - I have seen many patterns that explain the ongoing difficulty of why Mia (from HKNC in New York) is having a hard time finding people who need her services - "the lack of coordination of the resources that are available".

Many people in need of services left Mississippi and there is nothing to come back to....not yet anyway...no homes and no jobs and in many communities no post offices, medical facilities, etc.

Many others are in their broken homes and are hard to get to - still no phone lines or internet access, roads still in a mess, perhaps no TV to see the adds about who to call for help, limited gas to get out or no working vehicle, cell phone coverage sporadic.

Others, who are in Red Cross shelters, are hard to find because (due to federal regulations) these shelters must move every two weeks. How can the local and state and out of state disability resource people find people in need on a consistent basis when the "gathering places" keep moving? (One shelter can not even tell you where the others are on a consistent basis.) I believe this is about to improve.

I know that efforts are being made at the state agency level to not only mobilize more service providers to enter the "wake zone" but they are also trying to create a cross agency comprehensive listing of available resources for people with disabilities to give to Red Cross workers and all the other relief effort entities.

With so much devastation, I'm not sure what "available resources" will look like at first and over the next few months. I hope that there is a plan in the works for the arriving disability service workers, like Mia, to have a safe place to stay (hotels are still full of relief workers and citizens with no homes) and the needed "passes" to get to all areas of one devastated community after another. May they continue to find food and gas....and good maps to find the shelters as they continue to move....

I apologize for the weariness in my tone. Please be patient. I know that hope and determination to develop and follow a plan for building anew will continue to grow in me and in all Mississippians.
-- Linda

Holiness

C.S. Lewis in "The Weight of Glory" writes:

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations-these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit-immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. . . . Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses."

Mississippi's Finest

I am a Mississippian. I was raised here, and we live, work and worship here now. I love Mississippi and its people and all of our beautiful, ugly, loving, messy and harsh history. I am proud of Mississippi’s hospitality and our reputation as kind, friendly people. I am blessed to have been raised in an era of integration and reconciliation, to have been a white student in a predominantly black public high school and now to work with and for people of diversity and integrity. We have suffered unprecedented pain in Hurricane Katrina. My family and most of our community were spared from the deepest cuts, and our church is blessed to work in the midst of the storm and provide aid and succor to many being overlooked by larger efforts.

Even so, we are receiving such service from the rest of the country as to overwhelm any expression of gratitude and pride. What beauty to receive compassion from so many foreign sources, what grace to enjoy the relief of strangers in hard times. The day after the storm, we drove our little family to refuge in north Alabama and were met by lines and lines of utility crews pouring south from Ohio and Pennsylvania. In our second night in Alabama, my grandparents’ church deployed a horse trailer full of bottled water and cash down the roads to Meridian, Mississippi, even as the drivers could not be sure of fuel enough to return. On our way home on Tuesday, I witnessed convoy after convoy of National Guard and regular Army trucks racing to provide fuel and water from diverse points. We watched lines of police and emergency crews from Birmingham and Dublin, Ohio. The crew who turned our power on, almost one week to the hour, were from North Carolina. Our church has received trucks of supplies from Tennessee, Illinois and Missouri, at least, and our church has volunteers today from South Carolina, Illinois and the city-state of Memphis. Churches from Arkansas to Colorado have offered to house the displaced. We have received offers of volunteers from scores of other states, clamoring to work, to clean, to serve and heal in Mississippi.

I have offered praise and gratitude to the Father for this outreach, yet one scene of aid alone has brought tears to my eyes. Traveling home through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Monday, I met a line of empty buses with a police escort rolling toward the disaster. As I met the escort on the highway, I was stunned and crushed to see the buses led by a cruiser emblazoned with a bold, blue “NYPD.” Here was the city who suffered so much four years ago and who received so much aid and love from around the world, donating buses, drivers and police to serve our rural, poor, parochial neighborhood so far from Manhattan. What grace, what beauty, what love is this in a time of desperation.

We are blessed beyond words with the grace and protection of our Father, and we are rich beyond imagination in this nation. We are called now to great deeds and service, courage and long-suffering. We were spared to serve those who were not. Unforeseen opportunities confront us to love, and we pray to see those who are hidden in refuge. We are called to mourn, to work, to love and to give glory to our Father Who weeps, Who protects, Who delivers, Who provides and Who heals. Hallelujah.

Long Term

The long-term effects of Katrina are going to be harder to deal with than the short-term, I think. People can be hospitable (even if it's not radically hospitable) for a week, a month, maybe even two. But I really think this- this evacuee/refugee status of people, the rebuilding, restructuring, everything involved- is going to take much, much longer. And the psychological effects are going to be difficult to quantify, much less actually deal with.

I am ashamed to think about how short of a time I really prayed for people after September 11th. It rocked our world, and we all felt it. But I was just far enough away to be able to get back to "real" life in a pretty quick time. I don't know how long it takes to get back to "real" life if you have been in the thick of something like that. Is there anything other than "real" life, every moment, every day, in every situation we are in? "Normal" might be another word to use, but when does everything become "normal" again for the people who are intimately affected?

Of course JRB and I are not truly affected by this storm- we were on the fringes, but it has made me more aware of the need to continually listen to people and their needs. And it is important for people to see that life continues in all forms after a huge event, even if they don't understand how others can do it.

So, I am convicted to pray- pray for the people affected by Katrina, by September 11th, by the Rawanda genocides, by Apartheid, by the Holocaust, by Slavery, by anything and everything.

Pray and Give

I am left nearly speechless at the devastation wrought by Katrina. Anything that I write here will be ineffectual in expressing the scope of the devastation and the ensuing need. I am simply at a loss. I have typed and re-typed trying to convey some sense of what has happened. It is simply beyond me.

I come back to one simple thought. I need to help. We all need to help.