A Natural Grace

by Dee Wade

Gulf Coast Highway;
he worked the rails;
he worked the rice fields,
with their cool dark wells.
He worked the oil rigs
in the Gulf of Mexico,
The only thing we've ever owned
is this old house here by the road.
"Gulf Coast Highway"
by Nanci Griffith/ James Hooker/Daniel Flowers
©1988 Wing and Wheel Music (BMI)
Rick Hall Music, Inc./Danny Flowers Music (ASCAP)

It's late in the afternoon. Quitting time, and then some. We're here in Gautier, Mississippi, not far from the Gulf Coast Highway. This old house here by the road is a marvelous hundred year old structure that hurricane Katrina filled with five and a half feet of muddy water. Everything inside was ruined, and now, eight months later, we're finishing new drywall and painting a couple of the rooms. I'm putting away tools, organizing things, noting what's here and what we need, making plans for tomorrow. Doing what I'm dangerous at: thinking.

Sounds from the front porch float through the open window and settle in the room. Congenial voices rise and fall around one central conversation and a couple of smaller ones on the side. Laughter is frequent. Al, the owner of this house along with his wife Odessa, tells about an alligator that was found recently in a pond across the road, beyond the near tangle of trees and undergrowth.

Unperturbable Kim, from the Anchorage (KY) church, fearlessly leads Team Gautier on its journey to the sunny side of our Synod. She discusses a topic dear to everyone's stomach with the crew from the Zionsville (IN) church: the merits of the fried grouper at the Petite Bois restaurant. It's just a hop, skip, and jump away from the Gautier Presbyterian Church where we are staying, and where the recently married Reverend Chris Bullock serves as pastor.

Team member Ann, also from Anchorage, breaks off from telling a story about growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, to receive a call from one of her children, either Jackie or Shawn. Moving to the near end of the front porch, it sounds like she's offering homework encouragement long distance. Last night, she shared bedtime prayers with them, each in turn, by cell phone.

Lenelle, member of the Team from the Glasgow (KY) church, makes connections with a local historian who has dropped by to pay Al and Odessa a visit. Lenelle rarely requires all six of the advertised degrees of separation between her and any other human being on the planet. In spades she was given the gift of hospitality. To her, all strangers are potential friends.

This is why we are here, what we came for. A long day's labor yields honest relationship. How quickly does the Spirit forge bonds when we are gathered in one place, of one mind, and devoted to one task. For us, that task is to respond to the call of God, rebuilding hope as we rebuild houses along the ravaged Gulf of Mexico. This effect is down right Pentecostal, though of a more mellow sort than struck Jerusalem fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus. The gentle tones of friendship, carried on a sweet evening breeze, fill the soul to the top.

Two nights later, a thunderstorm torments me and the tent I occupy, bringing an abrupt end to pleasant dreams. The paper thin fabric rocks and rolls, and at times vibrates in accelerating cycles, like a flag in the wind. Rain, falling at an enormous rate, leaks water into the tent through the seam between walls and floor. Waves of thunder are the only thing louder than the rain, and at one noisy point I yell as loud as I can, just for fun, but can't hear myself. Did I mention the lightning? Constant, too. Since I can't sleep, I consider reading my book in this natural pulse of illumination.

It is an experience more invigorating than terrifying. One is aware, however, of its seriousness, and of the value of a well-made tent and of a cot standing above the growing puddle of rain on the floor. The thunderstorm lasts maybe an hour, which seems like an eternity. But none of it compares to Katrina. This wind, this water, this noise, this duration are like a mere hiccup of hers. An afterthought. There are storms, and then there are storms. There is a Pentecost of convivial harmony, and there is the rush of a violent wind that creates an entire people inhaling Spirit who follow Jesus who glorifies the Holy One of Israel.

We have to leave Gautier in order to return to Kentucky. Which means that we must also leave the house of Al and Odessa improved but still unfinished. Before we head north, we take a western side trip to Gulfport via Interstate 10 and follow the exit southbound to get back on U.S. 90, the Gulf Coast Highway. It's an old, historic road, one parallel to the even older Spanish Trail. Katrina broke up its flow by destroying several of its intercoastal bridges, but the map shows the Highway stretching from Jacksonville, Florida to west Texas, before it dissolves again into I-10 for the trip to Los Angeles.

Through Long Beach and Pass Christian we drive, following that road, being reminded over and over again of how much is lost along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It will never be the same again. We pass countless ruined houses, each one with a story to tell, each one with a family waiting for a contractor, or an insurance payment, or a church work team, or a bulldozer. Some families still wait for their FEMA trailer, just in time for the next hurricane season.

We want to help them all. We want to blink our eyes and replace the bombed-out looking landscape with people and houses with trees and swing sets in the yard and intact schools and shops and restaurants and churches and hospitals and businesses in the neighborhood. But we can't. We can only do what we can do. We can only keep coming back to the Gulf Coast, bringing other friends with us, working for one family this time, another the next, until, trip after trip, year after year, one house at a time, a dent is made in all this devastation. It's a marathon, not a sprint. When Nanci Griffith sings her road song of loss and hope, she's probably thinking of Louisiana or of her native Texas. But it works for Mississippi, too.

Highway 90, the jobs are gone;
We tend our garden,
We set the sun...
And when we die,
we say we’ll catch some blackbird's wing,
we will fly away to heaven,
come some sweet bluebonnet spring.

  

Posted: 11-Jun-2006 3:32 PM