[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

New Orleans

Forgive me; I am about to be political. Can't help it. I can't seem to 
write about New Orleans without saying things about policy. On the other 
hand, I can hardly write about anything else this week.  I'll keep it brief.

I can't get past two words: "choice" and "sorry". This is one disaster for 
which we can definitely let God off the hook, unless you want to blame God 
for making the Caribbean a hurricane-friendly zone in the first place. I 
could reel off the choices, starting with the fundamental one of building a 
city below sea level in an area prone to hurricanes, and ending with the 
choice to spend money on the war and tax cuts and not on the levees. But 
the real choice that bothers me, and that (I suspect) grieves God 
enormously, is the choice that we made, years ago, to allow the existence 
of an underclass, overwhelmingly black and urban and poor.  Did we turn our 
backs on these people, and are they paying for that decision now? As people 
keep remarking, none of the faces in the Superdome or the Convention Center 
is white. I suspect a disproportionate number of the dead are black.

Second, the word "sorry". I'm sure we'll hear a lot of "regret" in the days 
to come about the mishandling of the initial relief efforts -- and yes, I 
know the scope of the problem was huge, but the fact remains that there 
*was* time to make at least some preparations, and they weren't made, and 
that aid was disgracefully slow to arrive. You don't do consultations or 
consider your choices when people lack drinking water; there's no time. You 
concentrate on getting them water, and fast. No doubt in the days to come 
there will commissions of enquiry and reports and all that.  But there's a 
curious disconnect in all the statements and speeches that I read and hear 
from the federal government, an odd distancing. Somehow I suspect we'll 
hear "regret" when we should be hearing "sorry".

But a real "sorry" -- not the air-kiss variety, intended to manipulate and 
self-protect -- is what's called for. Without fingering anyone for the 
failure (that will no doubt come) and regretfully lapsing into the passive 
voice, the victims of the flood were failed, and failed very badly. They 
know it, and unless that failure is fully acknowledged and repented, they 
will have every reason to be angry and alienated.

Will the word come? I don't know. A true "sorry" means taking full 
responsibility for one's own share of the problem, without minimizing it or 
trying to cover one's posterior.   It means focusing on one's own failure, 
without excuses, which is terribly hard on the ego. It means taking action, 
perhaps resigning a post, reversing a decision, altering a mindset -- 
because "sorry" requires true penance and amends, an old-fashioned concept, 
perhaps, but a very Christian one.

We'll see what happens in the days ahead. But if those who need to say 
"sorry" can't say it now, I trust that they will say it, and learn to mean 
it, when God faces them in just and loving judgment.

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I'm about to hit some sacred cows, and they moo so badly. -- Phyllis 
Tickle, aka The Divine Miz T.