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.  

New Orleans made me a missionary deacon

Think of your own history when you pray, and there you will find much mercy. This will also increase your awareness that the Lord is ever mindful of you; he never forgets you. So it makes sense to ask him to shed light on the smallest details of your life, for he sees them all.

Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, 153

I am in New Orleans, Louisiana, this week for the US National Diaconate Congress.

The last time I was here was in March 2007, just months before moving to Honduras as a lay missionary with the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán.

I had come to New Orleans for the first time in March 2006 with a group from St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames, where I served as a lay campus minister. We were part of thousands who had come to respond to Hurricane Katrina.

That first visit changed my life and opened up my move to Honduras in June 2017 and my ordination as a permanent deacon in July 2016.

A passionate university student, Nathan Stein, had urged me to organize a group to New Orleans and helped me carry this out. While there we gutted three houses.

The second house belonged to an African-American woman, Sharon, who had raised her children and grandchildren in that house. She joined us that day and prayed with us before we began.

She stayed as we carried out the ruins of her house. But what moved me was her serenity. She moved my soul.

That night we reflected on the day and some students wondered how they would feel if all their possessions were ruined and were carried out of the house to the dump. I began to think about all I had accumulated and wondered what would people have to do with them after my death.

I soon began to think that maybe I was called to do something different, to even move on from my ministry at St. Thomas. Was I being called to something MORE?

Those reflections, stirred by a woman named Sharon, led me to Honduras. Years later, Bishop Darwin Andino asked me to consider the permanent diaconate, confirming my call to serve, with the grace of the sacrament of orders.

And so I am here today in New Orleans for a convention of deacons, grateful to God, who called me to move on – in the encounter with an African-American woman in hurricane devastated New Orleans.

Grace is everywhere, if we have the heart to recognize God’s presence in the smallest details of our lives.