A Hurricane Remembered

The ghosts have been walking these nights along the towns and cities of the Gulf Coast. A hurricane is not an earthquake, but ‘til do: a wall of water, is a wall of water, is a wall of water, is a wall of water. The hearts of us all go out to the Japanese.

In the last of our hurricane disasters, you will remember Venice well. The tv journalists were stationed there, in that last town on the Mississippi River. I remember it well. I served the Methodist Church there, while living in Buras, ten miles above. There was a levee on both sides of town, living as we were twelve feet below sea level. The town no longer exists.

I remember one evacuation all too well. Our daughter was down the street, playing at the school principle’s house with his two daughters. My wife and I were down in Venice making pastoral calls. The forced evacuation came suddenly and we were separated. When I saw the face of that Japanese father going from schoolroom to schoolroom searching for his daughter, I remember, I remember. I thank God that it is remembrance – a choice – so many of those surviving members of families will remember and re-live and have no choice. It is so in Haiti, Chile, New Zealand, now Japan.  Thirty days of Anxiety Disorder and then the compulsion is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in all its multiplicity.

“And where is God?” you ask. I know not, any more than you. The answers I once memorized seem to have escaped my grasp along the way. I only know there is a still, small Voice with which I commune as I go to sleep each night, remembering in thankful prayer all the good friends I have had along the way.