Fun with Jacks

If ever there is a summer class more fun to be teaching than The Fiction and Nonfiction of C. S. Lewis, I would like to know. We have only had one day of it, but I am already convinced that every morning should start by telling stories about Jack Lewis (everyone should get the infinitely readable biography by A. N. Wilson right now) and then hearing letters from Screwtape aloud to elicit mild (okay, this part could be better) conversation about reason vs emotion. Thanks to Myles Roberts for playing along with me and the undergrads.

Easter Triduum

We'll need a few brief words on the Stranges' long weekend here:

1. On Maundy Thursday, we decided to buy a CR-V instead a Rav4 because Toyota and I don't have the same supply-and-demand curve.
2. On Good Friday, we actually bought said CR-V. Randy's early-morning offer almost let us cave into Toyota's demands--thanks, again--but we were resolved. After 6 weeks (seriously) of begging various Toyota dealers to have mercy on us and struggling (not very successfully) against frustration, we easily negotiated a below-invoice sale on a moonroof, "Sahara Sand Metallic" car attached. Also on Good Friday, we had fun hibachi with my entire family and the true Bachmans spoke a little gracious Japanese to our chef. Happy birthday, Aunt Vicki, with belated greetings again to Mom and Emily.
3. On Resurrection Sunday, we decided we'd really gotten a grand vehicle. We showed the CR-V to the last member of my family who hadn't yet seen it: Dr. Phifer (Grandma Esther had already spun it to Wal-Mart the day before). After a veritable Easter feast (scrumptious roasted chickens, primo citrus cream pasta, crunchy green-bean salad, bread, and chocolate cake) with the family, Micah and I hardly knew what to do with ourselves. Go look at cars, we wondered? Nah. Just sat around and read instead.

And what does one read on Easter? As if you had to ask. The only thing that's right for the season:

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

Why, TS Eliot's "East Coker" from Four Quartets, of course (that being its fourth movement's final stanza). After all, the Easter season is not for car buying but for worship. This Lord's Day reminds us we will one day rise from the dead with Jesus and everyone else who belongs to Him. "That will be fun," as Myles Roberts said (litotes, ha, litotes). Yes, I think it will.

Oxford American, how I love thee.

Most of my blog-readers already know this (I reckon 2 out of 3 counts as "most"), but let it be known that though I love Oxford American for lots of reasons, I now have another: this glossy mag with admirable Southern quirkiness has taken one of my poems!

The poetry editor returned two of three recently submitted poems in Monday's mail, indicating that he had sent the third about to all the staff, so I was hopeful but unsure. But yesterday, the managing editor emailed me to say that they'll publish "Three Days After Easter, 1994" in their upcoming "Best of the South" issue (on newsstands mid-May), and they're even paying me. Little do they know they don't need to: I'm so thrilled I'm about to come out of my skin.

So yesterday was a red-letter day for my inbox. And my year. And my life.

Hurricane Relief: post mortem

On Sunday evening, back from the trip, I was glad to bathe in my own tub, crawl into my own comfy bed, and sleep next to my husband, but I felt a great emptiness waking the next morning to the familiar and heading to a sterile office rather than going to gut houses. I woke with my heart in the 9th Ward, and it has followed me around ever since.

This is partly circumstantial—I was there for three days and feel changed because of the brief trip, so it's natural to still be thinking about it. But there's also an emotional reality that steps beyond the circumstantial—that is, I didn't just wake Monday thinking about the Ninth Ward because I was there but because it's right and necessary to do so. When I woke at 4:30 Monday morning with a Katrina cough seeking ibuprofen, it felt weird walking in the dark through my familiar home, confident that everything was where it was supposed to be. It felt weird to have a confident familiarity. It felt weird to have a home.

But we must press on in action, not despair. One of our number said she never thought of the situation as potentially hopeless until she saw the Ninth Ward itself. Indeed we may never see this thing fixed in our lifetimes or even in this age, but we must hope in the God who will fix it one day, at least for the glorious age to come.

The very beginning of Genesis 1 can teach us something amazing here: when the creation was a dark and formless void that to our eyes would have looked like utter chaos, the spirit of God was yet hovering, doing something that eventually finished wise, right, and good. We may not see the activity, may not understand it at all, but I believe we can be confident in the Lord of the universe to not forsake His creation. One day and for all eternity, He will make it right. When we look at this kind of destruction, it seems all the more amazing that He will do it. And such assurance energizes me to work in the meantime. As long as He tarries, let us partner with Him in the care of His creation.

The whole of Habakkuk speaks to this same paradox: the prophet is frustrated over God's apparent lack of action as oppressors threaten Israel, and he asks some rather indignant questions of God in the face of it. He asks questions like "Isn't this pretty much reversing the promises You made to us? Isn't this diminishing Your glory? Don't you care about this injustice?" and then just sits there awaiting answer. God's gracious responses point Habakkuk to His glory and governance—He rules all things perfectly, though it may honestly not always look like it at the moment. I'm not sure Habakkuk himself really gets it by the end, but he starts moving that way, singing a fantastic song that we might apply to Katrina's destruction well: even if this place never grows back, God is still good and deserves worship because He is the only joy of my heart and the only security for my feet.

So let us proceed with hope, knowing He will finish it one day for His own glory and our good. We will be more glad on that day for our temporal obedience. How gracious He is to join us in His work! In contemplating a higher and higher view of God and in doing such God-honoring work is our hope and joy.

Hurricane Relief: Day 3

We spent Saturday morning touring the New Orleans area since we had finished our Boys and Girls Club work faster than they expected. Jerry Hilbun, Pastor at FUMC Slidell, prepped us: the levee break decimated the Ninth Ward but the west wall of the hurricane (which is the least of the wind, of course—the worst hit Bay St. Louis and beyond) plus the 17' storm surge covered Chalmette. So we went there first—it's a ghost town but for the Home Depot (newly opened) as abandoned cars line the road (some say "Do Not Remove" in spray paint on the windshields) and many buildings are burned black.

Across the bridge, the NASA plant was unscathed—they sandbagged before the hurricane and went back to work the next day.

The Lower Ninth Ward is rather middle class—cars everywhere, so some ask why they didn't leave. Reason: they had no warning. As we drove toward the 17th Street Canal, the Industrial Levee, we could see the damage increasing. Homes more and more flattened, or leaning, or moved further over—on top of a truck, into the next lot. Or, as we crossed the train tracks (an additional barrier for the Upper Ninth Ward) into the Lower Ninth Ward, completely gone. Where are the houses? There is only debris. 1100 people died in the Lower Ninth Ward alone. The first several blocks from the levee are completely flat—just staircases leading to emptiness, piecemeal washers and dryers, empty photo albums, china strewn about.

I walked to the top of one staircase which had across its top the base of a great tree. Looked down the tree and realized it had fallen diagonal across the house, no other traces of which remain.

I walked up the driveway to another house and entered what would have been the front door. Walking through that ghosted monument to a family, I saw a party dress stuck to tree limbs, as though hung awkwardly out to dry. Tiny Tots kids clothes, dry clean only, the tag still read. Brown crepe and black velvet, crinoline skirt. Wrapped around its same makeshift laundry line, a long piece of white aluminum siding, which clapped loudly in the wind, making an awkward waltz with the two-beat flap of the dress: clap-flap-flap, clap-flap-flap. Then the log packer at the levee joined in for a terrible crash at the beginning of every other measure: pow clap-flap-flap, clap-flap-flap, pow clap-flap-flap, clap-flap-flap.

We all felt a bit sick to be there, Ashlie especially: she had been excited that we were coming but now felt like an invader into the property of the dead and forgotten, a tourist in a graveyard.

Click here for all my photos of the Ninth Ward and the rest of the trip.