Liturgy outside & Vespers at the Catherdral

Crawfish Boil!
On Sunday there was a Craw fish Boil at Our Lady of Holy Cross College, which is sponsored by the Marianites, the congregation with whom I am living. The festivity began with a lovely Sunday liturgy held under the tent, sitting at tables which moments after mass would be filled with massive amounts of cooked crawfish. I can add how to peel crawfish to the skills I have acquired while in New Orleans. Never do I recall even eating crawfish up north. They are like little tiny disproportioned lobsters. The shells are a little softer than lobsters but it is a lot of work for a little meat since they are so small, however it was well worth the effort! Along with several dozen crawfish we consumed jambalaya, corn on the cob, and potatoes. I enjoyed the food but most of all I enjoyed seeing so many people who really seemed to be enjoying themselves!

Vespers

People from all over the Archdiocese of New Orleans gathered at the cathedral yesterday afternoon for evening prayer. The entire service was well done, and included people of many racial and cultural backgrounds. Children of various cultures who opened the service with a liturgical dance set the tone for the event. The archbishop recently wrote a powerful letter on racial harmony, a portion of which was read during the service. It spoke of the current reality of Post Katrina New Orleans, and how the hurricane and flood had further exposed many social problems rooted in racism. All who were there proclaimed aloud a commitment to the pastoral letter, to promote justice, peace and equality. I left the cathedral with a sense of hope, inspired by the people (the church) of New Orleans who are committed to working towards racial harmony and justice.
I was able to scan the front cover of the booklet created for the service.

Parade
I did not go to any parades this weekend, however on the way home from the Crawfish boil we passed one, on the opposite side a street (on the other side of the neutral ground.) It was a small parade with only one float, a marching band, and a few horses. One of the sisters who lives in the community next door, has said that she always keeps a chair in the back of the car she drives "because you never know when you're going to come across a parade!" Only in New Orleans!

Ministry
At work we have been asked to start mapping where those who are homeless are staying in the city. This should be an interesting project.

Have a great week! Thanks for all your prayerful support!

Patrick, Joseph, "Indians," Vietnamese New Year

I really do work hard while I am here. I don't typically go into details about what I do, because of client confidentiality, so it only seems like I spend all of my time celebrating. The celebrations and gatherings help to balance out the frustrations I face daily while trying to house people in a city that lacks housing, and trying to refer people for services that are scarce. Instead of boring you with complaints and frustrations I want to share with you my experience of recent celebrations which are essential to the local culture.

Saint Patrick
On Saturday there was a parade held in New Orleans. I attended with a few of the sisters. We sat at the corner of Magazine and Washington Ave, thinking we were at the beginning of the route, but we were really towards the end. Before the floats there were many men who were dressed up walking by and handing or throwing beads and fake green flowers. Most of the men were drunk and rather disorganized. Finally, the floats came and the people riding on them threw: cabbages, carrots, potato, onions, Irish Spring soap, many many Mardi Gras beads, and a variety of other "throws." The parade was surely a lot of fun. When I told my father about the parade, especially of the "throws", he laughed; apparently they neglected to teach him these Irish cultural traditions when he was a child in Ireland!

Saint Joseph
The previous weekend I went to a small St. Joseph's Day parade held in the French Quarter on Saturday evening. They threw mostly Mardi Gras bead, and little plastic Italian flags.

The St. Jospeh altar is a popular New Orleans tradition which the Sicilian immigrants apparently brought with them. In order to thank St. Joseph for favors throughout the year people either in their homes or church set a table with breads, fish, fruit, wine, candles and cakes. The food is blessed and traditionally given to the poor. The St. Joseph altars I saw were beautiful.

Indians
The African American community began a tradition, I was told as a way of honoring Native Americans who helped them escape slavery. African American men make there own elaborate colorful costumes which typically include feathers and bead work. The costumes were gorgeous! They form tribes, such as the Ninth Ward Navajos and on "Super Sunday", the Sunday before St. Joseph's Day (I'm not sure why that day) the tribes gather for ritual, dance, and parade the down the streets. What a wonderful event!

Vietnamese New Year
One of the sisters I am living with, works at the local seminary. She invited me to go with her to a celebration that the seminarians had planned in honor of the Vietnamese New Year. The celebration began with liturgy, was followed by delicious appetizers, a dragon dance, a tasty Vietnamese meal, entertainment which included children signing, a magician, and another singer, and concluded with the children leading everyone in an English song about community. It was another memorable celebration which I am grateful for having experienced.

On Monday night I spoke with a group of college students from Utah who are here volunteering during their spring break. I spoke mostly of the plight of the homeless in New Orleans and the housing situation. It was a pleasure to meet such a delightful group of young people. There are so many volunteer groups coming to help in so many ways. I have met people from all over, all of whom are here to help. What a blessing!

Please keep my grandparents in your prayers.
My mother's father recently fell and broke his hip; he had surgery and is in a hospital in Florida.
My father's mother recently fell and broke her rib; there is not much that can be done for a broken rib; my aunt is caring for her.
Thank you!

TIME

Challenges
It seems that there are many challenges which make it difficult for social service agencies to really meet the greatest most pressing needs of the the people here in Post Katrina New Orleans. My agency is able to refer those who can prove they were homeless according to HUD's definition the week prior to Katrina a voucher that will pay rent until September. It does not include security deposit. Few chronically homeless people have enough money upfront for the security deposit. There was an agency that had funds that we could refer our clients to so that they could get security deposit money, but that money ran out this week. I called the local office of a well known national agency to ask if they had deposit money since I had a flier stating that currently they have rental assistance. That agency could not help with deposit money; I asked what they do assist with: if a person is one month behind on their rent they can put them on a waiting list to get assistance with one months rent, however they will be on the waiting list for approximately two months. These are the everyday things I encounter at work; sometimes I laugh at the absurdity of it all, other days I start to feel frustrated but simply remind myself that these agencies are all inundated with requests and are probably doing the best they can to distributed limited resources.


Hurricane on the Bayou
Today I went to the IMAX theater located at the Audubon Aquarium by the Mississippi River. The 45 minute film was entitled Hurricane on the Bayou. It seemed the filming started pre-Katrina with the intent of educating people about the need to preserve wetlands. The movie included a lot of footage of Katrina and its aftermath. It helped me to understand how the wetlands serve to lessen the blow of a powerful hurricane because the hurricane slows down as it goes over the wetlands. The gradual depletion of wetlands over the previous several decades (mostly because of human error and negligence) is one reason why Katrina hit New Orleans with such force. From the title I was expecting a National Geographic style film showing what happens to the animals and plants which live in the Bayou during a bad storm. Instead it told the story through the perspective of a real teenage girl doing a science project on the wetlands and playing music with other well known local musicians to bring attention to the issue of preserving the wetlands, documenting also her experience during Katrina. It was a powerful story which brought tears to my eyes and reminded me of the need to pay attention to environmental issues.

Hours
In October when I left Philadelphia and had to switch planes in Chicago, I gained an hour in Chicago, which at that time mostly seemed to prolong the layover. I was here only a short time when I felt I gained yet another hour when the clocks fell back. One of those hours was lost while was switching planes in Baltimore when I went home to for my grandfather's funeral. It seemed helpful to suddenly be able to turn the clock back the hour back late in the afternoon during the long car ride to New Orleans(3:00 sounded a lot better than 4:00 at that point, when we'd been driving since 6:45am.) Tonight an hour gets lost again. I'll loose another one when I return east, but inevitably one will be found again, in November.

Spring break
According to Tendings (our province newsletter) Rhode Island College spring break students arrive at the provincilate in Pennsylvania tomorrow night. Their presence always reminds me of my Spring Break experience there which was about 12 years ago now. I am glad that a group still comes faithfully each spring break. Please let them know that they are in my thoughts and prayers even though I am obviously not physically present.

Have a good week; even if it is an hour shorter than usual!

Neutral Ground

Outreach
Outreach is unique. I have done social work in an office where clients come into my space. I have also done home visits usually in clients homes. In some ways doing outreach is like doing home visits, because we see people where they live, only it feels very different because they live in public places such as on the street, in the park, or by the river wall. The other reality is that I see my clients or they see me when I am not going about official Unity business. For example if I go for a walk, or show visitors around there is always the possibility of encountering a client. I could be crossing the street to go to church in the morning and while I am literally in the middle of the street, that is standing on the neutral ground, clients may spontaneously call from the side walk yelling over the passing traffic to provide me with an update on their housing situation.

Neutral Ground
I think I have mentioned the neutral ground in at least one previous entry. It is what people in New Orleans call the grassy median. The term neutral ground is used frequently because, here most main well traveled roads have them. They are often fairly wide and many contain beautiful trees. A Philadelphia example would be the median on Route One (Roosevelt Boulevard), expect that these roads are not quite as busy, wide or as major as "the Boulevard." A Rhode Island example that comes to my mind is by Scabrough Beach on Ocean Road in Narragansett, except there are no trees on that median; its width and the turn arounds are similar to those of New Orleans' Neutral Grounds. They are an important aspect of New Orleans culture because, it is where people gather to watch parades.
Here is a poem I wrote a couple of months ago abut the need for metaphoric Neutral Grounds.

Every road should have a neutral ground,
adorned with growing grass or leafy trees.
If hectic traffic has to be,
if concrete and asphalt are modern necessity,
At least the center shall be a still, softer space,
a slower pace,
of gradual greening and growing,
in between life's high speed lanes,
a silence existing amidst sound.
Every road should have a neutral ground.

Religious Formation Conference
Yesterday I attended an RFC (Religious Formation) workshop here in New Orleans. It was held in a conference room at Our Lady of Wisdom, which is a lovely nursing home that 16 religious communities in the New Orleans area created together for their aging members who need care as well as for lay people. The conference was designed to teach us to reflect on our experiences , to view them using social and ecological analysis, which means asking the hard questions about why things are as they are in terms of economic, cultural, political, social, and ecological realities. The next step is to do a theological reflection viewing the reality in light of faith traditions (considering scripture, catholic social teaching, our charisms, etc.) Such reflection is meant to be transformative, leading us to change and action. Whatever action we choose as a response of course begins the cyclical process all over again. I also came to realize that whether it was consciously considered, it was this process that led my community to ask me to go to New Orleans.

Since we are in Post-Katrina New Orleans, we reflected on the impact of Hurricane Katrina. During the workshop, when doing the social analysis we specifically considered the reality of poverty, environmental issues, and violence. At first I thought I might have little to contribute since, unlike most participants I had not been in this city prior to Katrina and had not experience the trauma of the storm and its immediate aftermath. Their stories and perspectives were invaluable for me to hear. Because I have direct contact daily in my ministry to the homeless I actually felt I was able to contribute well to the discussion about poverty and people asked my perspective. Discussion inevitably lead to the need for both direct service to meet people's basic needs, ways to empower people to meet their own needs, and the need for policy change at all levels of government to create a more just world where all people's basic needs are adequately met and that allow the earth to thrive.

During the lunch break all "newer members", defined as those in formation and those under the age of 50, were encouraged to sit together. We had a wonderful discussion, which I found insightful. It was helpful to realize that many of us as new members (even though we are in different communities with different charisms and ministerial focuses) have similar struggles, questions, desires and concerns for ourselves, our congregations and the future of the church and world.

It was intersting to attend this workshop in a different "region." Next week the RFC workshop will be take place in Philadelphia. I am curious as to what you will use as the focus of the praxis for social analysis and theological reflection. Those of you who attend, please let me know. Please send greetings to all my "Insearch" friends who will likely attend.

Thank you!
As usual, I am behind on thank you notes. Many have sent me letters, feast day cards, small gifts, even valentines. Thank you also for donations especially from the provinciate staff around Mardi Gras it will surely be used to help those who are living in poverty here in New Orleans. Please know that I am truly grateful and appreciative and some day I truly do intend to catch up on thank you notes and more officially acknowledged your kindness.

Someone asked me yesterday if I feel supported, as sometimes in religious communities people who are working at a distance from their congregation and or those doing something different than most of the congregation, do not always necessarily feel well supported. I did not hesitate to say that I feel very supported. I am grateful that I experience support from my entire province (including lay associates, health systems and prov. staff, current and former lay volunteers and of course especially the sisters) from many other people (family, friends) as well as from the sisters I am currently living with. If you are interested enough to read this, than I feel that you are supporting me and I thank you!

During this season of lent, may you experience greening and growth at your center, the neutral ground of you life.