One Hurricane, Two Tragedies

The joy of our coming together—the joy of our early September—has been tempered. On a day that we usually celebrate the nourishing power of water in our annual Water Communion, we must now also name its harsher side.

We see a wet hand reaching out through a broken attic window, we see a body slumped in a half submerged wheelchair, we see water—who knew there could be so much water? Our minds struggle to stretch, to comprehend all that has been lost, all that is no more.

But make no mistake—there was one hurricane, but there are two tragedies. The first tragedy is a fully natural one. It was caused by patterns of weather combining into a killer storm, a horrific hurricane that happened to hit a low-lying region of our country. Despite what some churches may preach this morning, this natural disaster wasn’t sent by a vengeful God as punishment for jazz or Mardi Gras or offices of planned parenthood. It was weather doing what weather sometimes naturally does, in a very powerful way. And I do not mean to minimize that awesome destruction.

But I can’t stop thinking about the second tragedy—the one that is completely un-natural, the one that is fully inhumane—the one that we created. We caused it, as a nation, by what we choose to value most, by what we name as our national priorities, by our historic patterns of decision.

Hurricane Katrina has exposed the self-created underbelly of the “American Dream.”

This is a country of great and growing inequality, divided by ever deepening lines of class, race and access to opportunity. We are not one nation under God . . . or anything. There are two Americas, and we have been forced to peer into the heart of the one we most want to forget.

I believe the images coming out of New Orleans are a direct result of our failure to protect the most vulnerable among us—not just from a storm—but from a segmented and segregated existence. We have defaulted on our moral imperative as a just nation to lift up the poor, the disadvantaged, and the infirm.

In a nation where most people say they believe in God, we act in a most ungodly way.

This offense was there long before Katrina careened into the delta. Her winds simply blew the blinders off our nation’s eyes.

I hope we look carefully. These images should and must haunt us. Hurricane Katrina has given us an opportunity to redeem our nation’s soul. We must address the issues of race and class. We must look at how we allocate national and natural resources. We must at last let justice walk this land. This is, perhaps, the only way to honor all that has been destroyed. This is, perhaps, the only way to honor all who have died. This is, perhaps, the true rebuilding that needs to be accomplished.

“My house, my husband,” she cried. “All hope, all life . . . washed away.” May we as a faith community rise up and cry out with her and with so many others. May we become the truth tellers and the world shapers our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to be.

Through us, hope returns. Through us, life begins anew.

May it be so.

Copyright 2005 Tim Kutzmark