Bishops Wade In

From the Church Times:

THE BISHOP of Louisiana, the Rt Revd Charles Jenkins, was sitting in what look like the biggest trailer in the world. It’s parked on a car lot outside Walgreens, a former drugstore that is evolving into a church and community centre in the poverty-stricken, storm-wrecked Lower Ninth ward of New Orleans.
....

Away from the stunning architecture of the tourist areas and wealthy residential districts, this city shocks you to the core, which is why the larger-than-life Bishop Jenkins declared himself mighty glad that the House of Bishops chose to come here.
....

EIGHTY PER CENT of New Orleans was flooded when the levees broke during Katrina and released a 12-foot torrent of water through the city. Only the high ground of this crescent-shaped city on the Gulf of Mississippi was spared. Stinking water stood up to eight feet high for weeks in homes that had had to be abandoned instantly, and where bloated bodies remained until they could be retrieved. Scrawled marks remain on houses, indicating how many corpses and cats and dogs were taken out.

Flimsy trailers outside rotting homes house the optimists. They won’t abandon their houses, even though they will have to be gutted and rebuilt if they are ever to be fit to live in again.

I met Valerie, a feisty black woman whose house was almost entirely swept away, so that only two sets of stone steps were left. She has kept them as a monument outside the wire fence round her trailer. She has created a compound within which she fights on for the federal government to recognise the plight of the hundreds of thousands who want their homes back.

Remember that this city has been virtually abandoned by the federal government, the state government, and the city government. As of today, help still comes too little and too late. The great accomplishments in rebuilding and recovery come from the determination and labor of the people of the city and compassionate volunteers.

Whatever you think of the document that came out of the House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans, as a native of the city, I will ever be grateful that the bishops chose to meet there and see for themselves the scope of the disaster and the slow recovery, and I thank them for spending a day working in the recovery effort.

I thank Bishop Charles Jenkins for his efforts and powers of persuasion in bringing the bishops to New Orleans. He has been a force behind the work of recovery, and I thank him for that, too.

I thank the Church Times for a very nice job of reporting here.

...give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Link from The Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana.