LORETTA RIVERS:
LIFE AFTER KATRINA
The last time she saw New Orleans was a Saturday afternoon, weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Normally, the French Quarter was a bustling area, thronged with people. Upon her return to there, however, she saw only a solitary store open. The closest thing to “normal” she encountered was a homeless man. Just before the hurricane, her church was preparing for a fundraiser. Returning later to the church now, she found instruments and the staging still in place and tables ready for dinner, but a film of mold over it all. The greatest sign of life and hope was the pastor’s typed note, fixed to the door, inviting calls to the cell phone number he provided.
The New Orleans resident in this story is Loretta Rivers, assistant professor of social work at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, a doctoral student at Tulane University, and a NACSW member of many years. Loretta is one of half a dozen NACSW members who lived in New Orleans or Slidell, Louisiana, and she shared with NACSW her experience dealing with Hurricane Katrina and how she is managing.
New Orleans has been Loretta’s home since college, where she has worked, lived, volunteered for a senior citizen ministry, worshiped with her church community, and enrolled in a doctoral program at Tulane University. Now it has all changed. Going back, she said, “I did not feel as if I had gone home. I went to say goodbye to life as I had known it.”
At the seminary, the classes have resumed with students scattered to extension centers throughout the area. (The semester resumed Oct. 3. The on-campus students have scattered to extension centers, online classes, and short term workshops.) It’s a challenge, for some more than others. For students from the area, the challenge may be compounded by multiple losses. One student had called Loretta the night before she spoke with NACSW. He had lost his home and church community, and had returned to living with parents. Loretta is keeping in touch with students like this through computers and occasional phone calls. She herself had recently submitted her Institutional Review Boards forms for her doctoral research, but with flooding in other parts of the city and Tulane’s closure for the semester, the work will have to be reconstructed and resubmitted.
Since the hurricane, everyone has a story to tell. For awhile, the most frequently asked question was “where are you from?,” as if geography conveyed the essence of experience. Lysol, Clorox, and air fresheners have become a way of life. Mold is abundant. Things Loretta had salvaged thinking they were okay, on closer inspection are too moldy for use. Still, she’s more fortunate, she says, than others. She returned to New Orleans with a friend whose once “immaculately kept home” was so damaged she walked away with only a plate and two small figurines.
Loretta is learning to be a recipient of care rather than a caregiver, and she feels she is learning firsthand what it means to be on the receiving end of assistance. She had only recently moved into a townhouse. Boxes, all still piled on the first floor, were left behind. Their waterlogged contents are now gone – a resource library of books and her framed diplomas. Bookcases that buckled, furnishings, and file cabinets covered in mold now need to be replaced. As bad as it all looked when she surveyed the damage, Loretta says, “The first thing I saw was the sun hitting a metal cross hanging on the wall. That cross was the one thing that I knew for sure would survive. In the midst of the chaos, there was hope.”
Willi Dalaba
NACSW Board Member
ON POLITICAL
ACTION
While attending each of the two most recent NACSW conventions in Reston and Grand Rapids, I have been struck with how dilemmas we face as Christians in social work are played out on the floor of the large meeting room.
In Reston, one keynote speaker encouraged us, through his use of illustrations, to become deeply involved in the lives of young people who are in desperate need of positive role models, while a panelist later cautioned us against paternalism. I wrote about this issue in Catalyst a year ago.
In Grand Rapids, the question seemed to center on how much I should be involved in political action. One keynote speaker encouraged all of us to be involved at all levels of political action in matters affecting the poor, such as in advocating for a living wage among other things. Later, at the annual membership meeting, one member expressed her concern that perhaps there was too much emphasis being placed on political action. For someone who turns to NACSW for refuge from the political battles that only result in division and hard feelings, her sense of peace was being threatened. I can appreciate both views.
I may dislike being pigeonholed into any one party, and I may dislike the tactics and the rhetoric used to divide and solidify party support on either side,. but it seems that I cannot seriously discuss advocacy for the poor without at least touching on things political. This is especially true among church friends. Just look at some of the passages of scripture listed on our worship schedules during the season of Advent.
During Advent, we wait with a longing hope for the One who is, who was, and who is to come (Rev. 4:8). He comes with great power and might. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” (Is. 64:1). Mark tells us, “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory” (Mk. 13:26). He comes to save. “Restore us, O God, let your face shine, that we may be saved” (Ps. 80:3). The people need to be saved from their sin, from themselves, from those who oppress them.
He also comes to comfort the people. “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins” (Is. 40:1-2). “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs in his arms” (Is. 40:11), and “He will speak peace to His people” (Ps. 85:8).
And He comes to level the playing field. “A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain’” (Is. 40:3-4). Again the prophet writes words similar to those Jesus applies to Himself, “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners” (Is. 61:1-2).
After her encounter with Elizabeth, Mary said, among other things, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Lk. 1:26-38). Let’s not forget that the One who was to be the consolation and redemption of Israel was born of a virgin, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lay in a feeding trough.
So it seems to me that political action, at least at some level, is unavoidable for Christians in social work. With His coming, the long-awaited Messiah turns the political and economic systems as we know them upside-down.
David Fritz
Catalyst Writer
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