November 5, 2012


This morning, Donna was especially missed - again - because she wasn't up before Terry to make coffee. And Darrah keeps forgetting to turn things on.

Driving to the worksite before 8 this morning, we talked about the markings that were made on buildings in the wake of the 2005 storms - those disaster relief symbols that indicated whether houses contained occupants, dead bodies and pets. When we first came to New Orleans we saw them on every building. We see very few these days, although we have heard that some people preserve them, like some surviviors of the Holocaust use their arm tattooes as symbols to help us never to forget .

Today we installed bathroom subflooring, finished tiling and got pretty far on grouting the kitchen floor; the upstairs bathroom tiling is well underway, too. We framed and painted several interior windows, installed deadbolts, reinforced and repaired doorframes, prepared wrought iron railings and gratings for installation, painted the stair balustrade, installed a new security front door, cleaned up around the front outside of the house, installed base moldings, and panelized beneath the front windows.

Keisha, our new volunteer coordinator, joined us at the Os' house and helped prepare tile for grout and even cut tiles with the wet saw. She lugged untold buckets of water for the grouters as well. Because she has no car, she had to take buses to get to us. But we brought her back with us to CELSJR.

Last night for our check-in I read a passage from Pema Chodron (The Wisdom of No Escape) about how, if you follow a worthwhile practice, you're in for a lot of inconvenienc Ultimately, the inconvenience isn't an obstacle; instead, being wholeheartedly committed to a warrior's journey humbles you and opens your heart. We talked about how this trip was especiallly inconvenient for many of us, due to family, health and work complications, but that we are each very glad to be here now.

Tonight Chuck Mills (of the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond) and NaNa (who served as our chef last year) came for our Dialog on Race (version 202). They asked how we are experiencing racism or anti-racism in our own practices. They gave us the definition: Racism = Prejudice + Power. We talked about how our congregation is limited in terms of racial diversity. It shouldn't be surprising to any of us (but it is), that we can work toward being an anti-racist organization by examining our own experiences of race. As white people, we think of specific, racist moments, rather than the way people of color see racism in terms of institutional, systemic realities. Chuck told us that Black people live with an internalized sense of inferiority and whites, with a corresponding sense of superiority. We are "swimming in privilege" so we don't notice the unfairness. Racism robs humanity from all parties. We were encouraged to become "comfortable with being uncomfortable," to operate along our "growing edges."