New Orleans, Honduras, and the African-American woman

How an African American woman in New Orleans 

got me to Honduras.

During my twenty-third year in campus ministry at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames, Iowa, something happened that changed my life. Maybe I should say some things happened.

The first was Hurricane Katrina that devastated the New Orleans area in August 2015.

We responded in the parish with aid and Dee Thompson, a good friend who is a nurse, went and served those who left and were housed in Texas.

But a young man, Nate Stein, insisted that we ought to go and help. He had been involved in our student service projects and was, for a while, on our student justice and service team. He had been to Appalachia.

Finally persuaded, Nate and I began to plan to get a group to go to New Orleans during the March 2016 student break. Fifteen of us went and worked with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

The first days we gutted and cleaned a house that was empty. Then we went to another part of town to clean out a house that had not been touched for months. The waters had reached halfway up the wall and remained there for weeks. The house, the furniture, the clothing - all wreaked of black mold.

We arrived and met Sandra, an African-American woman in her sixties, who had raised her children and grandchildren in this house. She was ill just before the hurricane and thus had to stay in her house until the waters forced her out. Then, she fled to a neighbor’s roof to escape the rising waters. She and others were rescued by helicopter. She then went to Houston and she had just come back to New Orleans.

As was our custom, we prayed before we began. I asked her to join us. Her response was most welcoming. She noted that she was a Baptist but was very happy to be joining us in prayer.

Then we began the long work of taking all her possessions out of the house.

 As we took out all her possessions, Sandra stood there with a serenity I could hardly believe.

She stood there – with a sister and a grandson. Occasionally we came across something personal that was not very damaged and offered it to her. She gracefully declined.

What struck me through all this was her tranquility, her calm in the face of seeing almost all of her possessions, her life, being carried out to the curb, to be taken to the dump.

That night the students and I sat around in a church sharing our thoughts on the day. Many of the students remarked on Sandra’s tranquility, her calm. Some asked. “How would I feel if I lost all my possessions?”

But I began to think about my house and my possessions. I began to think of my mortality.

What’s going to happen with all my junk when I die? Who’s going to have to go through it?

It was a moment of detachment.

When I got home, I began to wonder if I might leave my ministry in Ames. I had been in correspondence with Dubuque Franciscan Sister Nancy Meyerhofer, a good friend whom I had first met in El Salvador when I was on sabbatical, volunteering for six months in the parish of Suchitoto where she and four other US sisters served. I sent her an e-mail, asking if there was any way I could be of service there.

This was not something I had thought of. In fact, in February, my spiritual director had asked me if I would think of just leaving my ministry at St. Thomas. I was happy in my ministry and even had the opportunity to teach a class about once a year in the university. I was comfortably ensconced in a nice small house. My immediate response to my director was “No.”

Yet two months later I was seriously considering leaving for Central America

Somehow, while we were emptying Sharon’s house God opened something in my heart. As I look back, I realize that while we emptied out Sandra’s house, I was being emptied.

This emptying raised a deeper question in my heart: Am I called to do something more? (How typically Ignatian.)

Somehow, while we were emptying Sharon’s house God opened something in my heart.

This happened almost fourteen years ago. And now I find myself in the hills of southwestern Honduras, older than Sandra was when we met her. But I still need to keep pondering – What does God want me to let go of? In what ways need I to experience the emptying of God? What more?

In all this I return to a passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians2: 5-7, that has formed me – since high school.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave…

Help me, Lord, to remember the roots of my missionary vocation and an inspiration of my diaconal calling.

Help me, Lord, to empty myself.