A new year

I am preaching this morning at a suburban New Orleans church. One of the scripture texts for the day is from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and it is set in a time when the Jewish exiles living in Babylon were allowed to return home to Jerusalem. There has never been a time more appropriate for a text about exiles returning home. Over the last couple of weeks, the exiles from New Orleans have been drifting in with children in tow. The fall semester ended, and wherever the kids were going to school during the last four months, they are now coming home to New Orleans and its suburbs to return to their own schools (some of which are holding classes in locations different from where they were B.K.). The college students are coming back -- again, not all to the same campuses where they began the fall semester a few days B.K.

I read in the paper that the estimated population of New Orleans is now about 100,000, or a little less than a fourth of what it was B.K. But that population is crammed into the areas that didn't flood -- and 80 percent of the city flooded. Now, if I do the math, it still works out to about 20 percent of the people in 20 percent of the land area, but the crowds jamming the grocery stores, the malls, the restaurants, the banks, and the roads belie those numbers. On Friday I spent 40 minutes in the drive-through at the bank, and I don't think that police car parked on the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground (median) was there to deter bank robbers -- it was to ward off fights breaking out over who was trying to get into which line.

The exiles are returning from Babylon, wherever Babylon happened to be. Last week I drove to Houston for the first time, giving an exiled friend a ride back to her temporary home. Going to Houston for the first time is like the story of the blind men who encounter an elephant. One touches the leg and decides it's like a tree. One touches the tail and thinks it's like a snake. One touches the tusk, etc. I saw one small part of Houston and had to drive all the way across town on I-10 to get there, and I lucked out that I missed the worst of rush hour. (Also, it was the week between Christmas and New Year's, when a lot of people are on vacation.) I decided Houston was a lot like Atlanta, except the downtown connector in Atlanta probably has one or two more lanes. It's all about expressways. If you don't have a car, you're out of luck. And the friend I brought back to Houston doesn't have a car, which is probably going to be the chief motivator to bring her back to New Orleans. In New Orleans you can get around pretty well on public transportation -- and right now, A.K., the buses are free.

So, Houston. To this one-time visitor -- like a blind person's first encounter with an elephant -- it was a lot like Atlanta. Only without hills. And with a climate like New Orleans'. It was nice, but it was also good to come home.

So, a new year. 2006. My wish for the new year is "No more hurricanes." But doggone, one popped up in the Atlantic on Dec. 30, making a record 27 named storms for the year. And I keep reading that this pattern is going to go on for the next decade. Congress, please note. We need those category 5 levees. NOW.

Here's to a better new year.

Pastor Kathy