Katrina Diaries: Justice Among the Ruins

Today I heard someone remark that those who had the most lost the most while those who had the least lost the least in this storm. While that may be true from a certain market orientation, people of faith are called to measure according to a different economy. There’s more than lousy politics going on; there’s lousy theology, too! Moreover, even within the framework of a market economy it would be more accurate to say that those with much lost much but those with little lost everything.

Within a more comprehensive economy, perhaps the economy of the kingdom of God, there is no accounting of the things that have been accumulated against what’s been swept away. Rather, we are accountable for treasure that has been given away and for hearts that have been swept away. As Albert Einstein put it, “not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.”

All of the folks we’ve been trying to help down here count themselves blessed and lucky. All of them lost homes, but none of them lost loved ones. Still, it is heartbreaking to pick up stuffed animals encrusted in mud, to find graduation pictures plastered to moldy furniture, to find a photograph date-stamped “December, 1974” and know that someone’s memories will be forever diminished by such losses.

Walter Brueggemann has said that the Biblical definition of justice amounts to sorting out what belongs to whom and returning it. In the wake of Katrina that is an improbably huge task.

Some things are easy. Today we were hanging drywall in the home of a soldier whose entire leave has been spent gutting his house and trying to get at least a little of it livable for his wife before he returns to active duty the last week of September.

I asked him if he was a fisherman. He said “yes,” and, pointing toward his back yard, I said, “well, at least your boat looks like it’s in good shape.” He said, “that’s not my boat. It belongs to the guy four houses down and across the street. It wound up there when the water went back down.”

Other things are more difficult. Another neighbor was cleaning out his house – a trailer he’d lived in for more than 15 years. His insurance was cancelled a few weeks before Katrina hit because the company was getting out of business in hurricane prone areas. No other company would sell him a policy until the end of hurricane season.

What belongs to whom? How can it be returned? Courts and legislatures will have to do some of the sorting. People of faith across the nation will be called upon to remind public officials that food belongs to the hungry, clothing belongs to the naked, healthcare belongs to the sick, jobs belong to the unemployed, and shared risks belongs to the commonwealth. Such sorting is the work of justice.

Among the few households we were able to help, the work of justice was on a smaller scale. While the folks we worked with counted themselves lucky, they were also experiencing an almost unfathomable loss and grief. Papers rescued from a crushed desk unleashed anger at an insurance company. A picture pulled from the muck brought on a torrent of tears. Some losses exceed any calculus.

What belongs to those whose losses cannot be counted? How can it be returned? Working at the level of compassion, perhaps the first gesture of justice is recognizing that dignity belongs to the suffering. The first part of this relief effort lies not in gathering scattered possessions but in helping the suffering restore their fractured dignity.