First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Lessons of the Storm

The first moral of the story of Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans flood has to be to take all media accounts with a grain of salt, until they are proven to be reliable. In disasters, as in other dimensions of life, each of us so often finds what we are predisposed to expect. There is evidence enough in the tragic waters to support everybody's pet theory: George Bush is an idiot; southerners are corrupt, black people are violent, welfare recipients are irresponsible, poor people are stupid, sports arenas are evil places, God hates gays, or gambling, or perhaps fossil fuels. Government is inept, and should not be allowed to spend our money or tell us what to do; government ought to spend more money and make people do what is good for them.

As humanists, many of us would rather be to blame than to be helpless. If it wasn't for global warming, if it wasn't for racism, if it wasn't for inadequate preparation, we say, we wouldn't be in this mess. While each of these claims has some validity, and each of these factors appears to have made the outcome worse, it is also important to recognize the essential arbitrariness of these natural disaster events. There have been destructive floods long before there was global climate change, and there were hurricane fatalities before George Bush ever took office. No combination of wisdom, prudence, compassion and virtue can make us immune to the organic processes of a living planet, but neither are we dealing with the wrath of a vengeful god who objects to gay pride parades.

No; the nature of our collective human condition includes the occasional emergency. The poet T.S. Eliot once wrote about the human propensity to "dream of systems so perfect that no one will have to be good." Such a dream, of course, is fanciful; at some point or another, each of us is challenged by circumstances that demand something of us, and in the process highlight the quality of our character under stress. Living in a culture that devotes no small amount of energy and resources to insulating most of us from such harshly definitive demands most of the time, we are not surprisingly fascinated by what is revealed about our essential humanity when the chips are down and the veneered infrastructure of civilization is ripped away. In New Orleans, as ever, it seems to me, the answer is a mixed bag - people behaved heroically, people behaved atrociously. The human spirit rose to sacrificial compassion and courageous ingenuity, the human spirit sank to violence, depravity, and callous self-concern. And so what we most urgently need to gather from this tragedy, as always, is the tantalizing clues to what makes the difference. What combination of personal qualities and circumstances either calls individuals into cooperative community, creativity, and leadership, or alternatively into selfish opportunism, greed, and exploitation of others? This is one of the enduring questions of all religious reflection through the ages, but it is never more pressing than as we piece together the meaning of events in the aftermath of such disasters as this year's New Orleans flood.

But before we can do an accurate assessment of what is to be learned from the various Katrina-related experiences, it is necessary to lay some compelling, but false, mythology to rest. Matt Welch, the associate editor of the journal Reason, writes:

Why were reporters, and neighboring communities, and observers around the world, and even the occupants of the Superdome themselves, so ready to believe the grisly rumors and tales of gratuitous violence? Something about the absence of real information in a context of uncertainty and fear makes us credulous; we gravitate toward the possibilities that are emotionally powerful, that have visceral resonance, even though they may be unpleasant - perhaps even because they are unpleasant. The hardest thing to do in a crisis is to maintain a rational skepticism, and to tolerate the ambiguity of ignorance until real information can be obtained. Examined in the light of fact, the untrue reports of what was happening in New Orleans really tell us more about our cultural fears and fantasies than they do about the residents of that city, however poor or desperate they may have been. And I wonder whether such city and state authorities as were able to exert any actual power within the flooded areas were so focused on crowd control and looting prevention because of a collective bad conscience about the condition of those citizens that long pre-dated this particular hurricane.

For the thing that is most remarkable to me about the whole sad, stupid, disheartening sequence of events, is the way in which the efforts of authorities to keep order seem consistently to have militated against the practical remedies and mutual assistance that kept trying to emerge, and indeed in many cases did effectively emerge, among the stranded themselves. Why food should be allowed to molder in refrigerators without electricity, and desperately needed water should sit pristinely behind locked doors while snipers shoot to kill those with the intelligence and initiative to make use of it, remains a moral mystery to me. How authorities can force people to leave those places in which they have established any sort of minimal order and precarious safety, without any help to offer or instructions about where to go, I fail to understand. Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky's story of their exodus from the flood has been validated, both by others in the group who shared their experiences, and by Arthur Lawson, chief of the Gretna, La., Police Department, who confirmed that his officers, along with those from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and the Crescent City Connection Police, sealed the Highway 90 bridge leading out of New Orleans to the unflooded city on the other side of the Mississippi..

As Michael Niman writes in The Humanist magazine:

I'm thinking that part of what we learn from these stories is that we all have a better chance of making it through the crunch times if we give ourselves and each other a little more credit; if we stick together, and honor the connections we create instead of suspecting them. These are the moments when it makes the most difference that we live out of our hopes, rather than our fears; that we seek to be gracious and generous rather than greedy and grasping. There is a story - one of many that I carry around as a kind of talisman of character, to remind me of the sort of person I would like to be - about a woman exiting from a crowded New York subway during the winter holiday season. Standing on the platform, looking through the window as the train she had just left was about to pull out, she noticed one of her leather gloves lying on the seat. To reclaim it was clearly impossible, and so with a jaunty gesture, she tossed its mate through the window, so that whoever might find them would have the useful pair. I wish that I might think that quickly, with that generous a spirit. But just imagine for a moment the public relations coup, if the phone call had come from the national headquarters of Walgreens, saying not just "Lock the door and get yourself out of there," but rather, "Give away everything perishable in the store. Hand out the water, the insulin, the diapers, the aspirin, the candy. When there's nothing left that will help anybody, then lock the door and leave." I submit that you could not buy the kind of public goodwill and customer loyalty that such a gesture would evoke with multiple millions in advertising.

We could live that way, my friends; we are tempted to, often and often; we do live that way, more often than we know. The horrors of New Orleans were both natural and human-made; but from what I can see, the human ones had their roots less in savage instinct and lawless spite than in abused power, fearful authority, and rumor-mongering. What did we learn? Pretty much what we already knew; panicked people clutch at straws of information, whether they are true or false; individuals can organize themselves and care for others in amazing ways, if they have access to minimal resources; the first instinct of fearful civic authority can be self-preservation rather than compassion. In moments of disaster, when the protections and the refinements are stripped away, the human spirit makes a choice, either to rise with our hopes, or to subside into our fears; to display the grandeur of which we are capable, or to give in to our basest impulses. And sometimes it is the people who have the least, and the greatest cause for despair, who find ways to patch the world together, while those who fear to lose their privilege make bad matters worse by seeking to protect themselves rather than genuinely assist others. There is no predictive formula, for knowing who will respond out of generosity and compassion, and who will react out of fear and self-concern - it isn't education, or theology, or economic status; it surely isn't public trust. It's some quality of spirit, as well as heart, and mind, and guts; it's some capacity for care and creativity, for courage and for a stubborn optimism which trusts that somehow a way can be found or made, and that gives ordinary people credit for extraordinary possibilities.

The next disaster will come in a different form; it won't be about levees and floods and busses - only the largest of the lessons we have learned from the pain of New Orleans will apply. And so we will face the challenges again as if they were new, and find our characters weighed in the balance of our responses, once more seeking the path of connection and compassion, looking for leadership that invites us to believe the best of ourselves and one another, rather than the worst. May we be about the business of cultivating that character within ourselves, and instilling it in our children and each other, so that on the day of the storm, whatever form it takes, we may arise into the fulfillment of the best of human aspirations and possibilities. May the lessons that we learn from this disaster help us to become more nearly the people we ought to be, as individuals, as communities, as a society; in that opportunity lies our best hope.

Opening Words:

Welcome to this hour of reflection and renewal,

To this gathering of the community of memory and promise.

The Humanist philosopher Clarence R. Skinner has written that

underneath the surface storms of life,

it is possible to find "the deeper life of unshaken composure."

As the fiercest hurricane cannot reach to the ocean depths,

so the most violent disturbances do not necessarily reach the area of calm and poise

which is at the center of a strong personality.

A quiet dignity is native to the soul.

Children often possess it, and so-called savages frequently manifest it.

If we let misfortune rob us of an ordered life, it is largely our own fault,

due to our attitude toward the misfortune.

It is possible to face shattering experience without being shattered,

and it is possible to go to pieces because of the most trivial experience.

There are those who have known a full measure of human suffering

and yet remained unswerved and unsurrendered.

There are others who crumble under the slightest blow;

because of an unhappy experience they let their lives disintegrate.

The difference between being broken and living a spiritually well ordered life

cannot be explained in terms of what happens to us.

Things and events do not break us.

We go to pieces because we bring to life a breakable philosophy.

If we bring to crises an habitual attitude of quiet thinking and unfrightened adequacy,

we can meet the most devastating experiences and still maintain our integrity.

Here let us seek to order our own lives, individually and together,

According to such strength, dignity, and integrity as shall enable us

to find that unshaken composure in the midst of misfortune and suffering.

May we be such people as do not crumble or shatter in the face of challenge,

But with quiet thoughtfulness and calm poise, unswerved and unsurrendered,

Make our days the reflection of our values, and our lives the example of our faith.

In that aspiration, we kindle this chalice flame, symbol of our religious heritage.

May its light shine as a beacon to all who wander dismayed,

Summoning them again to the community of reason, compassion, and courage,

Whose witnesses we are and seek to be.

Benediction:

Though our knowledge is incomplete, our truth partial, and our love imperfect,

We believe that new light is ever waiting to break through individual hearts and minds

To enlighten the ways of humanity,

That there is mutual strength in willing co-operation,

And that the bonds of love keep open the gates of freedom.