Practical spirituality for a complicated world.
***image1***As I write this column, early in the morning of September 2nd, a cool Northern New Mexican breeze is wafting through my window. I glance out toward the south, and I see the Galisteo Basin filled with mist, backing up against the Ortiz Mountains. Autumn is here in our wonderful little corner of paradise in New Mexico. I am grateful to Spirit to be living in the haven that Santa Fe has been for me. I am a refugee, a political refugee. I fled my homeland, but that doesn't mean I no longer love the land of my birth. I am a Southerner, and as much as I love New Mexico, I will always be a Southerner. How is it possible to love the South as much as I do, even while being in exile from its dark side? Yet, I do. I miss that moist, humid, green land where 10 generations of my family lived, loved, and died. I miss the smell of salt in the air, the aroma of boiled shrimp and crabs, the dancing of sunlight on the warm waters of the Gulf, filtered through the silvery haze of the ever present humidity. I did not flee my ancestral land. I fled the born-again religio-politics that have ravaged the spirit of my people to a far greater degree than any storm that ever blew in from the Gulf.
Yesterday, four days after the storm, I was finally able to get through to my sister in South Mississippi. There was a brief window of time when her cell phone worked. Hurricane Katrina hit them on Monday, and as of late Thursday, there was still no relief for them. There was a little bit of help, right along the beach, but Marsha lives in a rural area. They were spared the storm surge, but got 130 mph winds for over four hours. The eastern eye wall of Katrina passed over her house. That was the most powerful part of the storm. Marsha told me that the wind had screamed for hours, and the back part of her roof blew away. Suddenly, everything was deathly quiet. Marsha said they peeked outside, looked up and witnessed the most beautiful blue sky she had ever seen in her life. She told me that she could look to the east, then to the south, and see ugly, swirling black clouds. She knew the eye was passing over, but she didn't want to stop looking at that blue sky. They went back inside, and the wind suddenly returned, shrieking at over 100 mph, taking off the roof at the back of her house.
Marsha managed to get to my parents' house on Tuesday. They were okay, but shaken by the storm and the destruction it left behind. The roof of their house lifted up three feet, and was slammed down by a huge pine tree falling on it. Probably, a tornado passed over and picked up the roof. I was relieved to hear that they were okay. Even though my relationship with them has been strained, we're still family. When something like this happens, you put differences aside and take care of the business at hand. That's what families do, or at least that's what I was raised to do. I pleaded with Marsha to try to get over here and stay with us until things get back to normal. She replied that if they left their home, there would be nothing remaining when they went back. It's beautiful there, but it's not a wealthy community. People don't have a lot. They can't afford to simply walk away. Despite having finally peeked behind the curtain, I wonder if they've actually seen the reality of the great and powerful Oz? We can only hope that when the day comes for FEMA and Homeland Security to round up dissidents and other enemies of the regime, they will be as slow and incompetent as they are now.
As terrible as things are for Marsha and her neighbors, they are aware that there are others who have it just as bad. In addition to South Mississippi, New Orleans is destroyed. When we were growing up, New Orleans was a magical place for us. There was no interstate back then, and you got to New Orleans on a two lane road. We called it "The City." It was a huge treat for us to go over there, and even though it was less than a 100 miles, it took hours to get there. We were little country bumpkins, in awe of the myriad treats available in The City. Later on, I was in graduate school for four years in New Orleans. I still have so many friends there, or I did before this past Monday. If you never got to spend any time in New Orleans, I feel sorry for you. That New Orleans seems to be gone forever. Even should it be rebuilt, our familiar New Orleans is gone. Will we ever again have café au lait and beignets at Café du Monde, and laugh at the tourists? I wonder when we'll ever again visit Central Grocery, split a muffelata, or fried oyster po' boy, and wash it down with a Barq's? What about the Camellia Grill on South Carrollton? Will we ever eat there again? We used to go there late at night, after studying for finals, and feast on their French fries. There are a thousand other special places in New Orleans that I don't think I'll ever see again. I fear that when the time comes to rebuild, the real estate developers will turn it into another Las Vegas theme park.
When we were kids, Marsha and I loved to take our crab nets to one of the piers in Gulfport. We caught bushels of crabs in no time at all. We'd take them home and have boiled crabs. We couldn't eat them inside, for it was too messy. We'd spread newspapers on the picnic table out back under a huge, ancient oak, probably hundreds of years old, and empty the boiled crabs onto the old newspaper. Our cousins would come over, and the feast would begin. I would always keep a claw to scare my grandmother with. She didn't like crabs, and was always fearful one would bite her. She lived into her mid 1990s, and never got bitten by a crab! Now, all those places in Mississippi are gone, the piers are washed away. People in South Louisiana and South Mississippi will pick up the pieces and go on with their lives. That's what people do, isn't it? Despite the overall theme of repression, there were some fun times in my past. Now, the very places, themselves, will exist only in memory.
Ten years ago I read a book that predicted the coming break-up of America. I remember that the author wrote about looking for signs that the empire is cracking. He said that when you see pictures on TV of American citizens, in an American city, digging through garbage for something to eat, then you'll know that things have passed the point of no return, and big trouble is just around the corner. It's not the end of the world, but it is the end of the world as we knew it. I used to have respect for Michael Moore, but I don't any longer. He and other fanatically partisan Democrats continue to frame the disaster solely in racial terms, while Limbaugh's equally fanatical Republicans refuse any criticism of their inaction. I suspect it's going to be much harder to pretend that all we need to do is change the political party in power. I think that illusion died in Hurricane Katrina. Later on, I'll write about some of the spiritual and karmic issues I see connected to these events. Right now, I'm taking some time to mourn.
OM
To ask Robert a question, visit his Web site at www.RobertOdom.com, email desertrj@msn.com or send mail to PO Box 33, Santa Fe, NM 87504.
