In this Issue:

Diocese of Lexington reaches out to Survivors of Katrina

St. Raphael's first ever J2A Pilgrims Rock Ireland

Part of the Heart of Our Mission: Announcements

Solo Flight ritual: the art of loving

EYE: Can You Catch The Spirit Off The Beaten Path?

Hurricane Katrina News and Notes

Commentaries

From the Bishop: Matthew Goes to College

Reflection: Finding a home in the storm

X-ercizing: Community, solidarity, and humanity

Diocesan Calendar

Past Issues

Reflection: Finding home in the storm

By Kay Collier McLaughlin

For those who did survive the storm named Katrina, the word ‘home’ may never mean the same again. For terrifying days and nights, it was a place to hold onto life itself, whether on a perilous rooftop, the shoulder of an interstate or a pitch black Superdome. For the more fortunate, it was a fleeing SUV, a Hyatt or Ramada and the luxury of credit card comfort.

Reflections on home keep penetrating the most ordinary moments of every day, as images from the Gulf coast come via TV and newspaper. Rooftops barely discernable above murky water. Piles of trash which once were a house and its contents. The lifetimes of men, women and children, scattered by the violence of Katrina. Sometimes, the very lives, as well.

Scientist I am not. Theologian I am not. Except in the sense that my life journey and its inevitable ‘storms’ require that I ask myself again and again where I have met this story before in the life of God’s people. What kind of God is in this kind of world — not in the forces of nature alone, which are part of His creation — but in the great goodness as well as the horror of the aftermath? Who am I, who might I become in the face of such a storm?

Martin Marty, writer and theologian, in describing his own recovery after the storm of his wife’s death said: “It was as if the earth had shifted under my feet, and when I tried to step out into the world each day, I had no foundation. I had to create that foundation, over and over again.”

Robert Raines in his personal story of self-discovery — “a journey from despair to hope” — Going Home – found inspiration in the story of Abraham and Sarah. …and he went out, not knowing where he was to go. (Hebrews 11:8). As he struggled to find God’s will for this new part of his life, he discovered that “the nets and structures of our lives are always provisional…we have no advance guarantees, no blessed assurances, no certainties.”

Raines’ interpretation of the story of Abraham and Sarah blessedly runs a parallel track in my soul as the images of Katrina continue. By faith Abraham was called to go out, we read in Hebrews, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.

But, something in me protests. They had time to prepare. To say goodbye. To pack a few things to make a new home in their tents. In New Orleans and Gulfport and all along the coast, there was not recognition that it really was time to go. Katrina swept by the engineers’ warnings, the political priorities and the “we’ve waited it out befores,” creating a modern-day wilderness geographically, and a wilderness of wondering minds, hearts and souls across what had been the safest, most secure country in the world.

People on a wilderness journey are people living in tents, in between the times, in between homes, Raines says. Tent dwellers know that no habitation abides, and that the only question is when they will move on. Tent dwellers can no longer be as devastated as they once were when their first house was destroyed. Now they know that any house can be destroyed, so they don’t put their trust in houses anymore. Tents will do quite well.

Living in tents speaks of the predictable life rhythms of change and continuity; mobility and stability. We all seek the homelands that continuity and stability represent — and are surprised again and again to discover on our own journeys that permanence is not an earthly attribute. Like Marty, we struggle for firm footing on new foundations where we will not be reminded with such force that we will be called to do this again and again.

Now a country whose most visible displaced have carried shopping bags crammed with their meager possessions to their cardboard beds under city viaducts has come face to face with the reality of hordes of their brothers and sisters truly without. And it is those stories — not the cyber-linked executives reordering their worlds from distant cities — that carve deeply into the inmost self.

When survival is at stake, the altar can seem distant — the only song one can remember “help me make it through the night.”

Rebuilding a life is a slow, slow process, even when the nets and structures of the culture are in place. When all that one knows has been reduced to mud and rubble, the spiritual, emotional and physical rebuilding take on gargantuan dimension.

Raines says “As sisters and brothers of Abraham and Sarah we are all pilgrims on a faith journey. We have left the security of home and gone out not knowing where we are to go, risking failure, seeking a homeland, and for now, living in tents of perpetual adaptation. And where is God in all this? Is it possible that God really cares about all the children of humanity? Is it possible that God is with us on our journey?

Katrina reminds us all that home places are all too often wiped out by bulldozers or storms, lost relationships or sadness to which we do not want to return. But as Christians we are reminded by the Gospel that even in the midst of the Katrinas of our lives, God pitches his tent with us wherever we are, until that time when in Him, we will truly go Home.

In the meantime, like Abraham and Sarah, it is our job to keep creating Promising Lands wherever we are. That’s a tall order in our country right now. But we are God’s hands and feet in this process, with an ancestral story to remember in the darkest, scariest storm.

Thanks be to God.

Advocate Online Staff:

© 2005 The Episcopal Diocese of Lexington

The Advocate is mailed free to all Episcopalians in the Diocese of Lexington. The Advocate is published 10 times a year (monthly Sept.-Mid-Summer, bi-monthly Mid-Summer-June, July-Aug.) by the Diocese of Lexington, a non-profit organization.

Additional subscriptions: $10 per year and address changes should be sent to: The Advocate, P.O. Box 610, Lexington, Ky. 40588-0610.
The deadline for submitting articles, photographs, announcements, and letters is the last Friday of the month prior to publication. These should be sent to:
The Advocate, Kay Collier McLaughlin, Ph.D., Editor, P.O. Box 610, Lexington, Ky.
40588-0610 (Kcollierm@diolex.org).

Member: Episcopal Communicators; Associated Church Press Office: The Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Lexington, Mission House, 203 East Fourth Street, Lexington, Ky. 40508-1515. For information call (859) 252-6527.

All rights reserved. The Advocate reserves the right to refuse publication and to edit all contributions. Permission required for reprinting.