Oppressive. Merriam-Webster defines oppressive as "overwhelming or depressing to the spirit or senses."

 

That’s how I felt this year at the start of our work week in New Orleans.

 

The heat and humidity are oppressive. Ninety-five percent humidity in ninety-five degree heat is oppressive. Having to wear a mask, goggles & a hat in that weather is really oppressive. Deconstruction of a ten room duplex is oppressive. Carrying out plaster and lathe in buckets is oppressive. Pulling nails out of studs hour after hour after hour is oppressive. Driving through the city and seeing hundreds and hundreds of houses and businesses and churches that are still in various states of disrepair is oppressive. Seeing those big "X"s on the front of houses – which tell how many people or animals died there – is oppressive. Seeing people still living in very small FEMA trailers is oppressive. Hearing stories about contractors doing shoddy jobs and then disappearing is oppressive. Hearing about people who have gone through so much upheaval is oppressive. You get the picture.

 

And it got to me this year. Last year it was shocking and painful and raw to me. This year it was different, because it was a full year later. And I wanted it to be better than it was. It’s not that I expected to see life back to normal. I didn’t. But it was depressing to see how far there is yet to go. That’s not to say that we didn’t see progress and improvement – we undoubtedly did. But ‘back to normal’ is still a long ways away.

 

I think that what got to me the most is that I felt that way just spending one short week there. Yet it gave me some small sense of what it must feel like to live that experience every single day. To look out your window at rubble and trash. To have to make a mortgage payment on a house that you can’t live in. To have to spend a tremendous amount of time, energy and stress dealing with red tape and government agencies. To not have a job because the business you worked for is gone. To miss your family and friends who have left – or died. I could go on and on.

 

Oppressive.

 

And yet, for us....

 

...the taking on, and cleaning out, of a double-shotgun house – a big project – gave us a sense of pride. We pretty much finished a job we were told we wouldn’t be able to finish. That’s a good feeling. The hospitality and thanks that we were given by church members and the community was so gracious and heartwarming. Everywhere we went people made a point to thank us for our time and effort. And spending time with old friends, and making new friends, was special and meaningful.

 

God called us to put our faith into action on this trip, and each of us will tell you that our lives have been greatly enriched by being a part of something so profound.

 

I can only hope that the relationships, as well as the buildings, that have been built and repaired since Katrina, will help to sustain those who’s lives were forever changed by it. I pray that the people that we met along the way can and will believe in their souls that ‘hope shall bloom’ and that ‘God is still speaking’. And that, in some way, they could see hope and hear God through us. We could certainly see and hear those things in them.

 

I want to close with Psalm 121:1-2. This scripture was on a banner hanging in the narthex of the church we stayed it. It was made by a church in Maine, and sent to the Little Farm UCC: