On Sunday I'll hop on a very familiar blue-trimmed church bus (I'll probably be driving) and depart for the Gulf Coast. Sunday will mark the start of our fourth Hurricane Katrina relief trip to Pearlington, MS, a small town located on the Mississippi Bayou, and our fifth trip overall.
(Note: Last October's trip was to Houma, LA, a town devastated by 2005's other major Louisiana-bound hurricane, Rita.)
It was nearly two years ago when we first arrived in Pearlington to the sight of head-high debris piles and splintered, moldy homes. Our visit to the Ninth Ward that week was indescribable; a place where the bustling sounds of laughter mixing with Satchmo mixing with Lil Wayne had been drastically replaced with wilderness-like silence. At the time cars were piled on houses and houses, shifted from their foundations, piled on cars. GPS numbers indicated the spots where bodies had been found. Indescribable, indeed.
Today (or when I most recently visited in October) the Gulf Coast is recovering. As cynical as it may sound, the Gulf will never "recover" if "recovery" means a strict return to the way things once were. Chaos, death, destruction. These aren't things anyone "recovers" from. We learn, we grow, we move forward, we even reclaim aspects of whom and what we once were, but we remain forever changed.
Service to others has been a deep-seated passion, a foundational point of my life, for a long time. Many people wax cynical about a lacking human capacity to make positive changes in our world, but after four weeks on the Gulf Coast, and with number five looming, I can honestly say that change has been made and is being made daily in Pearlington and in Houma and in New Orleans. Things will never be as they once were, but change is happening. Thanks be to God.
Side note: As of this morning I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make this trip since I have to return two days early. The good news is that plans occasionally come together perfectly and that this was one of those occasions. To quote Hannibal from the A-Team, "I love it when a plan comes together."
I'll be sure to post more reflections, they're already brewing in my head....
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