One Story Universe

Here Dwells Mankind

2008-10-08T06:25:00.001-07:00

I drove to work in a thick fog this morning. I could see just enough of the brake lights in front of me to keep moving, and certainly nothing of the next stoplight. The world was tiny, densely quiet, and completely grey.

Then, just moments before I arrived at work, I sat stopped behind the car in front of me. I could see that the fog still hanging around my car became great reaching columns of mist ahead and then faded into crisp clear lavender sky. On the suddenly visible horizon, there were a few shadows of trees and above, a pink-tinged cloud. A single bird trilled. I knew that the sun would rise.

And then the sun did rise, golden and fiery and painful to look at over the parking lot of Thomson Reuters.

Household Outing

2007-07-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

We went out for ice cream as a household the other night and got this nice picture. (l to r: Annie, Amy, Angie, Gianna, Anna, myself.)

Harry Potter Book Release

2007-07-29T14:37:00.001-07:00

Here we are at the Harry Potter book release party in the Mall of America. (l to r: Ally Pozarski as Hermione, Anna Hagans as Ginny Weasley, Patrick Gaffney as Harry; myself as Professor Trelawney; Joe Gleason as Tom Riddle)

Meet Norbert

2007-07-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

This is Norbert. He is a 2006 Pontiac Vibe, and he has already proven himself an awesome division car. In the two months since I bought him, Norbert has transported three bookshelves, 75 pounds of pork (not including the beans that went with it) and 10 1-gallon ziploc bags of fruit, five people plus all of their swimming gear, a large cooler and a guitar, and several other things. I would also like to point out that Jeremiah Laust and Joe Bowar fit comfortably in the back seat at the same time.

Amy's squares - Corner pieces

2007-07-29T14:04:00.001-07:00

This is part of a quilt we made as a household. Scroll down to see the rest...

Anne's square - Allendale Women's House

2007-07-29T13:59:00.001-07:00

Maren's square - Parsonage

2007-07-29T13:41:00.000-07:00

Colleen's square - Allendale house with green porch

2007-07-28T15:28:00.001-07:00

Angie's square - 1434

2007-07-28T15:23:00.000-07:00

Anna's square - the Seitzes'

2007-07-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

Gianna's square - 1027

2007-07-28T15:16:00.001-07:00

Kathleen's square - Allendale Men's House

2007-07-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

Hannah's square - The Annex

2007-07-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

City Quilt

2007-07-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

The 1027 Women's household worked on this quilt together over the 2006-07 school year. The center panel depicts a people gathering in the spirit under a city skyline, and the surrounding blocks are our houses in Allendale and Dinkytown as of early Fall 2006. We are planning on hanging it on the wall in the 1027 women's fun room.

Here are some pics of the whole completed quilt. Each household member worked on one of the squares, and I worked on the center panel. I am going to do this in several posts so that you can see each square individually.

Allendale College Women's Trip - May 2007

2007-07-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

The Universe Comes to a Point

2007-04-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

"Have you ever noticed," said Dimble, "that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?"

His wife waited as those wait who know by long experience the mental processes of the person who is talking to them.

"I mean this," said Dimble in answer to the question she had not asked. "If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family - anything you like - at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there's going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder."

C.S. Lewis, from That Hideous Strength, Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., 1946

Contrast.

I've been thinking about our Father's plan for all of creation and where the People of Praise fits into it. (I'm going to presuppose some knowledge of the People of Praise here - for more information www.peopleofpraise.org.)

We've always been different. Committing yourself to spend two hours of every Sunday afternoon with a group of people who are not necessarily of your denomination, using an evening every week to build friendships with a few people you might not otherwise have been drawn to, submitting your prayer life, your finances and all your major decisions to someone who is not related to you and may not even have been chosen by you - these are not things it occurs to your average American to do as a matter of course.

But the Father wants us to be even more than that. We want to build real, physical cities that strangers walk into and know that they are in a different place. Our Father asks more and more and more of us for the People of Praise. He asks for our businesses, our work, our studies, our free time spent in homes that are ever closer together and more intertwined, our sleep, our eating habits, our creativity, our thinking, our 24/7, the clothes we wear, the people we love, and whether we like to keep the butter on the counter or in the fridge. He wants us all in. And every day, we see more and more clearly what the People of Praise always was as we become ever more what the Father has in mind for us; as the People of Praise becomes ever more itself.

This is only a small piece of the whole universe as it comes to a point. The day will come when all things are either of the united new creation, or of that which has chosen not to be the new creation. There will be no more fence-sitting; no more neutral ground. Everything will become clear. It is more clear now than it has ever been. The light of the Lord grows ever brighter.

The Three Princes

2006-03-02T13:06:00.000-08:00

Also Mom's story...

Once upon a time, there was a king who had the most beautiful and kind daughter in all of the kingdoms nearby. However, the king had a problem. His kingdom was secluded in a high mountain range, and very few people ever visited it. The king wanted his only daughter to find a nice young prince to marry, but the kingdom was so hard to get to that none of the local princes had ever been there. The king did not want his daughter to marry just any old prince, however. He wanted her to marry a good man who would make a good king for his kingdom and a good husband for his daughter. And so the king came up with a plan. He sent letters to three of the nearby princes asking them to meet at the foot of a very large mountain on the border of his kingdom, where they would find a quest waiting for them.

The three princes journeyed from far away to the meeting place and arrived on the appointed day. There was Prince I Can Do It By Myself, Prince You Can Do It For Me and Prince I Can Do All Things Through Christ. The princes looked around at the foot of the mountain for some sign of what they should do next, but all they could see was the entrance to what looked like a small, rocky cave. The three princes decided that they would have to go in one at a time, so that each prince would have an equal and fair chance.

"Well, I'm going in first," said Prince I Can Do It By Myself. "I'll show you how it's done."

So, Prince I Can Do It By Myself lit his torch and went into the gloomy cave. He walked through a tunnel just tall enough for a man to walk upright, and pushed a few spider webs out of his way. Those were not going to stop Prince I Can Do It By Myself. Before long the tunnel opened into a large cavern. When the prince had taken a few seconds to shine his torch around, he saw that there was a dry stream bed running through the center of the cavern. At the edge of the stream bed, there was a small wooden rowboat with oars for two people, and sitting in the boat was a small, wrinkly old man wearing an old, worn out, floppy green hat. He looked almost like he might be made of wood, or at least like he had not moved a muscle in a very, very long time. After a few moments of glancing around the cavern, it was clear to Prince I Can Do It By Myself that the only way to continue further into the mountain was to cross the dry stream bed to get to another tunnel on the other side. The prince walked up to the edge of the stream bed.

"Hello," said the old man suddenly.

Prince I Can Do It By Myself jumped and twirled around to face the old man. "What do you want, old wart?"

The old man tilted his head up slowly so that the prince could see his face under his giant hat. "You're going to need a boat if you want to get across that there stream."

Prince I Can Do It By Myself turned up his nose. "You must be seeing things, old man. There isn't any stream there. By the look of it, there hasn't been any water in this place for years. I'm going to walk right across without any problem, you watch."

"You do what you like." The old man shrugged. "But I'm telling you, this here is a magic stream. As soon as you set foot in that stream bed, a whole lot of water is going to come rushing out of this mountain, and if you don't have a good boat and two good rowers, you're going to be washed right out of the mountain."

Now, Prince I Can Do It By Myself was certainly arrogant, but he was not stupid. He knew that when you are on a quest and an old man tells you something, you had better listen. So, Prince I Can Do It By Myself walked over to the boat.

"All right, old man," he said, "I'll get in your boat. But I don't need the help of an old sack of bones like you to row across. I can do it by myself." And Prince I Can Do It By Myself pushed the front of the boat just into the stream bed and climbed in. He took his own oar in one hand and the old man's oar in the other and hunched over to wait. A few moments later, a wall of rapidly-moving water rushed out of the mountain and into the dry stream bed. The little boat was pushed quickly downstream. Prince I Can Do It By Myself rowed as hard as he could, but he was no match for the strong current.

Kookabunga and the Brownies

2006-02-15T13:27:00.000-08:00

Again, Mom's work...

Once upon a time, there were three little girls who lived with their Mommy and Daddy. Katie was the oldest, Kathy was the middle child, and the littlest of the sisters was called Kookabunga. Of course, her real name was not Kookabunga. Her real name was Kerri, but she wouldn't let anyone call her anything but Kookabunga. One day, Kookabunga was watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on TV, and she heard the heroes yell, "Cowabunga!" Kookabunga liked the word very much, but she was very little, and she could only say "Kookabunga". After that, she insisted that everyone call her Kookabunga.

One day, Kookabunga's mommy decided to make brownies. She took out a package of brownie mix and stirred in eggs and water and oil. As she was mixing it all together, Kookabunga came into the kitchen.

"Mommy, what doin'?" Kookabunga wanted to know.

"I'm making brownies for dessert, Kookabunga," said Mommy. "Brownies are very good. You will like them. Look, see?" Mommy showed Kookabunga what she was mixing in her bowl.

Kookabunga made an awful face. "No. Mud."

Mommy shook her head. "No, Kookabunga, these are brownies. They are yummy."

"Mud," said Kookabunga.

Mommy smiled. "You'll see when they come out of the oven they won't look like mud then."

Kookabunga went off to look at her storybooks. Mommy put the brownies in the oven to bake, and before long, wonderful, delicious smells wafted through the house. Just as Mommy was taking the brownies out of the oven, Kookabunga wandered through the kitchen again.

Mommy showed Kookabunga the delicious brownies. "Look, Kookabunga, now the brownies are cooked. Don't they look yummy?"

Kookabunga wrinkled her nose. "Dried mud."

"Kookabunga." Mommy was really suprised now. "Of course it isn't dried mud. These are brownies. Do you want a little taste?"

"No," said Kookabunga. "Dried mud."

"Well, all right." Mommy put the brownies on the counter to cool. "When everyone else has a brownie for dessert tonight, you don't have to have one, if you're sure."

"Dried mud," said Kookabunga and wandered off to make a puzzle.

That evening, after everyone had finished their dinner, Mommy gave everyone a brownie for dessert. She gave Daddy a brownie, she gave Katie a brownie, she gave Kathy a brownie, and she put a brownie on her own plate. Then, she turned to Kookabunga.

"Kookabunga, are you sure you don't want a brownie? Look, Katie likes her brownie."

"Mmm," said Katie.

Mommy smiled. "And look, Kookabunga, Kathy likes her brownie."

"Yum," said Kathy.

"Are you really sure you don't want a brownie, Kookabunga?" Mommy asked.

"No," said Kookabunga. "Dried mud."

Before she had a chance to eat her brownie, Kathy ran off the the bathroom, leaving her brownie right next to where Kookabunga was sitting. Kookabunga sat in her booster seat and watched everyone else eat their brownies. She wondered how they could like that stuff so much. Maybe it didn't taste as awful as it looked. Kookabunga looked at Kathy's brownie. She looked at Katie eating her brownie and licking her fingers. She looked at Kathy's brownie, just sitting there. She looked at Daddy, picking up the last few crumbs with the tip of his finger. She looked at Kathy's brownie, all by itself on the table. Kookabunga looked at Mommy, dipping the last little bit of her brownie into her coffee. She looked at Kathy's brownie, just within reach.

Kookabunga stuck out one little hand and picked up Kathy's brownie. Kookabunga took the tiniest little bite out of the corner of the brownie. It was good! She put it back at Kathy's place quickly before anybody saw her.

"Mommy," said Kookabunga, "Dried mud, please."

Daddy licked the last few crumbs off his finger. "Dried mud? What is she talking about?"

Mommy smiled over her coffee. "Kookabunga tells me that the brownies are not brownies at all, but dried mud. She told me she didn't want any. Are you sure you want a brownie, Kookabunga?"

Kookabunga nodded vigorously. "Dried mud."

"Okay, Kookabunga, I'll get you one." Mommy got up and looked around for her serving knife.
Just then, Kathy came back from the bathroom. Kathy took one look at her brownie and squealed. "Mommy! Somebody took a bite out of my brownie!"

Mommy turned around and raised one eyebrow. "Kookabunga, did you take a bite out of Kathy's brownie?"

Kookabunga looked at the table and didn't say anything.

Mommy walked over and crouched down to look at her. "Kookabunga? Is this why you wanted a brownie?"

Kookabunga nodded slowly.

"Kookabunga, it would have been all right to taste Kathy's brownie if you had asked first," said Mommy. "But it was wrong to take Kathy's brownie without asking her. I think I'm going to have to give this new brownie that I cut for you to Kathy. You can have the brownie that you took a bite of."

Kookabunga grinned. That was not so bad. "Okay."

Kookabunga ate her brownie slowly and liked every yummy bite. After that, every time Mommy made brownies, Kookabunga was more excited than anyone else because brownies had become her favorite food, even though she still called them dried mud.

The End

The Berry Sisters

2006-02-08T22:13:00.000-08:00

This will be the first of a set of three stories that my mother told my siblings and I as children. I have added some organization and expanded the plot in some places, but I must admit that the creative genius is hers and not mine.

Once upon a time, there were three sisters who loved to grow berries. No one could remember their real names, but that didn't matter because everyone called them Miss Raspberry, Miss Blueberry, and Miss Strawberry. When the berry sisters were little girls, they lived with their father and mother in a little cottage right in the middle of the biggest berry patch in the country. The whole family grew every kind of berry you can think of. They grew blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, huckleberries, gooseberries, cranberries, bilberries, and even razzleberries.

When the berry sisters were almost all grown up, but not quite, their mother and father died in a tragic accident, leaving the berry patch to their three daughters. At first, the three sisters got along well. They watered and weeded and pruned the berries together. But before long, they began to realize that they would have to work even harder now that there were only three people to do the work, and Miss Raspberry and Miss Blueberry became lazy. Miss Stawberry begged them to keep working, if only for the sake of their dead parents, but Miss Raspberry and Miss Blueberry refused.

"Raspberries will grow on the bushes even if I don't prune or water or weed them," said Miss Raspberry. "Raspberries are the best berry, and I don't think we should grow anything else."

"Blueberries don't need to be pruned or watered or weeded either," said Miss Blueberry. "I think we should only grow blueberries."

The three sisters argued and argued and argued, but they could not agree. In the end, they had to divide the berry patch among the three of them. The little cottage where they had been so happy was torn down, and in its place were built three houses all in a row that were so tiny they could not even be called cottages. From then on, Miss Raspberry grew only raspberries in her little patch, and Miss Blueberry grew only blueberries in her little patch. Miss Strawberry wanted to go on growing all kinds of berries, but she had to work by herself in a much smaller berry patch, to she decided to grow only strawberries. This was how the sisters got their names. They never spoke to each other again after that, although Miss Strawberry would often leave jars of her best strawberry jam on her sisters' doorsteps.

One day, when the sisters had been living on their own for a few years, the young, handsome prince of the country was out touring the countryside. He was out by himself on his horse, and he was just starting to wonder why he hadn't thought to bring lunch with him or even some water, when he came to a small iron gate, such as you might find in front of a cottage. However, the prince could not see a cottage. The yard beyond the gate was overgrown with the twisting, thorny branches of raspberry bushes that towered higher than any cottage could have been. The prince stared at the bushes for a while, wondering whether anyone could possibly live here, and if they did, if they would have food. He did not want to just pick the raspberries off of the bushes, because he was a noble prince, and the berries were not his.

Then the prince saw a thin line of smoke rising over the tops of the raspberry bushes, and he decided to yell at the gate. There was no way he could even try to make his way to the door and ring the doorbell. He would have needed some very large garden shears to cut through all of those thorns.

"Hello," he called. "Hello, is anybody here?" He tried to shake the gate as noisily as he could.

Inside her cottage, Miss Raspberry looked up from her slice of raspberry cheesecake and her glass of raspberry lemonade. She thought she heard something very far away, rather like the hoot of an owl in the distance on a dark night. She shook her head. She must be hearing things.

After several minutes, the prince sighed. How silly of him to think that anyone could live in such an overgrown place! He got back on his horse and continued down the road.

Before long, the prince came to another little iron gate. The prince began to hope that he might get something to eat. Here, he could see the top half of a cottage. The yard in front of the cottage was filled with large, overgrown blueberry bushes that were just a little higher than the prince's head, but he could see that there was a cottage there. Surely, someone must live here. If he could only get permission to try some of those blueberries, that would be enough.

The prince rattled the gate and called, "Hello, is anybody here?"

Inside the cottage, Miss Blueberry looked up from her warm blueberry muffins and homemade blueberry herbal tea, surprised. Surely, that couldn't be someone at the gate. There hadn't been anyone at that gate in years. Unless you counted Miss Strawberry, but of course, Miss Blueberry didn't open the gate for her. Miss Blueberry got up and peered through the curtains, but all she saw were blueberry bushes. She was just about to decide that she must be crazy when she heard it again.

"Hello, is anybody here?"

This time, Miss Blueberry was absolutely convinced. There was a man at her gate. She opened the front door, but all she saw there was more blueberry bushes. Miss Blueberry rummaged around her front room in a panic until she found an old rusty pair of garden shears.
"I'm coming," yelled Miss Blueberry, and she began feverishly cutting her way from the front door to the gate.

The prince stopped rattling the gate and grinned in satisfaction. There was someone coming. He tied his horse to the gate and stood back to wait.

The prince waited and waited. He waited a very long time. Finally, he decided that he could not wait any longer. He knew it was rude of him to leave, but he was starving. At this rate, he would be able to get home to the castle faster than he would get anything to eat here. The prince untied his horse, mounted, and continued down the road.

It wasn't long before the prince came to yet another little iron gate. Here, at last, he thought he would be able to get something to eat. The prince could see the entire cottage just beyond the gate. Although the yard was full of strawberry plants, they were low to the ground and planted in neat little rows with gullies next to each row for water to run through. The prince rattled the gate.

"Hello," he called. "Is anybody here?"

Miss Strawberry looked up from her fluffy strawberry shortcake and tall, cold strawberry milkshake. There was a young man at the gate. She put another shortcake in the oven to warm, opened the front door, and walked out to the gate.

"Hello," said Miss Strawberry. "What can I do for you?"

The prince smiled at Miss Strawberry. He thought she was absolutely beautiful. Miss Strawberry brought the prince into her house and made him a milkshake and some strawberry shortcake.

The prince enjoyed talking to Miss Strawberry so much that when they finished eating, he asked Miss Strawberry to come visit the castle. A few months later, he asked Miss Strawberry to marry him.

Miss Strawberry said that she would like very much to marry the prince, but she didn't see how she could leave her berry patch. You see, ever since the sisters had fought, Miss Strawberry had been hoping that someday Miss Raspberry and Miss Blueberry would want to come out of their houses and be friends and grow all kinds of berries again. Miss Strawberry wanted to be there when it happened.

The prince was not about to let this stop him from marrying Miss Strawberry, whom he loved very much, and so he sent all of his royal gardeners to Miss Raspberry's house and Miss Blueberry's house to cut through all of the berry bushes. When the royal gardeners had made paths to the front doors of the houses, the prince went to see Miss Raspberry and Miss Blueberry. He asked them if they would like to come live in the castle with him and Miss Strawberry.

When Miss Raspberry and Miss Blueberry heard how much Miss Strawberry missed them, they realized how lonely they had been hiding behind their berry bushes. They came to the wedding and hugged Miss Strawberry and told her how sorry they were.

From then on, all three sisters lived in the castle. The royal gardeners helped them to make the biggest berry patch there had ever been in the castle gardens where they grew every kind of berry you can think of: blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, huckleberries, gooseberries, cranberries, bilberries, and even razzleberries. And they all lived happily ever after.

The End

This is a Flamingo

2006-02-01T15:45:00.000-08:00

His sign says "Homeless - will work for shelter"

This is Tessie

2006-02-01T12:31:00.000-08:00

This is Tessie. I am not related to her, but I would call her my sister to anyone who asked. While she is, quite obviously, adorable and winning, that is not my reason for posting her here. (Or at least not my only reason.)

For the first few months of crying and sifting through the rubble, we all lived in Mike and Linda's big house in Metairie: three married couples, two single women, and one Tessie. That does not count the guests who came in from out of town to help gut houses and slept on the air mattress in the tiny sewing room or on the sofa in the living room where we had to take the chimes off the grandfather clock so that they could sleep. It does not count the other three houses on the same block that we filled with refugees and volunteers. But I can't tell everyone's story here. And anyway, the smaller stories are the same as the one larger story in the end.

Mike and Linda's house was blessedly undamaged, aside from needing a new roof and new fence in the backyard. A three-story house built in the old New Orleans style with the kitchen on the second floor, it had been large enough to raise seven children in, and we found that it was now just adequate for nine people and a good portion of their recovered belongings.

Mike, at the same time as we were busy invading his home, found that he hardly had the opportunity to be there. His longtime employer had to make repairs to its New Orleans office, and Mike's job was now in Baton Rouge, Houston, and Robert, Louisiana all at the same time. Mike was never in the same place for more than two or three days at a time. Mike is a lawyer; a man who knows what he thinks; a man who runs things. He was done yelling at god by the time we began returning to the city. At home, his demeanor rarely changed. He gathered information, gave directions, conducted discussions, and generally made sure everything was running smoothly.
Tessie didn't say "Mike" until we were several weeks into this radical common living endevour, but when she finally did, she became the second person Mike spoke to when he walked in the door. We had tried to train Tessie to scream "No!" after anyone said, "Luke, I am your father. It is your destiny". Mike would get down on his knees and do his very best Darth Vader impression for all he was worth. He could never get Tessie to respond, but we all had a good time chuckling at him. And we desperately needed to chuckle.

Linda returned to the house in Metairie to make sure that the roof got fixed and take care of the rest of us. When we came in from mucking about in ruined houses all day, She always had a hearty, delicious meal waiting. Not only that, but she was continually asking what else she could do. She lent cars, gave rides, did all the shopping, delivered sandwiches to the work sites at lunch time, and in the middle of all this, went to Buffalo NY and gave an entire retreat by herself.
When Linda scoffs at something, she has a peculiar way of blowing air out of her mouth. Tessie quickly picked up on this, and before long, we were all asking Tessie to imitate Linda with the cue, "What does Linda say?" Linda frequently volunteered to baby-sit Tessie, although she never got much of a chance with the rest of us around vying for the baby's attention. She told Tessie all about her own granddaughters, and put on a very good show of not being annoyed when Tessie rearranged her kitchen.

Megan, Mike and Linda's daughter, and Dave, her husband, bought a house in Metairie and spent months working to fix it up. They had just moved out of Mike and Linda's when the storm flooded their new house and forced them to move back in. To further complicate the matter, neither of their jobs survived the storm entirely intact. Dave was let go from the chiropractic practice where he was working, and Megan began to hear rumors soon after she returned to work that the hospital where she worked was likely to let her go.
Megan, a speech therapist, practiced new words with Tessie whenever she had time and marveled at how quickly Tessie learned compared to Megan's patients. Dave glanced down from his big armchair in front of the television in the evenings after a long day of making roofing estimates part time, and made faces at Tessie when he thought no one was looking.

Liz and John, Tessie's parents, had only recently moved into a house in Metairie themselves, but unlike Megan and Dave, they were renting. John's job was secure, but for the first few months his office had nowhere to work, so he went to the house by himself every day to sort through sodden belongings while Liz stayed home with Tessie. He would come in sweaty leate every night to the plate of Linda's dinner we saved for him with news of some newly discovered casulty - the camera, the guitar, the high school yearbooks. There was a new defeat every day. He listened patiently to all of the new things we had taught Tessie to say and rolled his eyes until we realized that he felt left out. The happiest I saw John during those dark days was the day we taught Tessie to say, "I love you, Dad".
Aside from the flooded rental house, Liz's family lost four other houses to the storm, including the family home in Mississippi, which had stood on the beach for over one hundred years. She poured herself into taking care of Tessie during the days. Any down time was time to fret and worry and had to be avoided. She removed Tessie from the phone cord and electrical outlets over and over again and wished for the day she woud have her own porch back and could let Tessie go wild with finger paints.

Eileen, another of Mike and Linda's daughters, was kind enought to share her room with me. Eileen had become engaged only a month and a half before the storm, and wedding plans were already well underway when the storm hit. As a nurse, she stayed in the city during the storm, working at a hospital and watching the water rise in the river until she drew the lucky straw for a chance to leave with a patient. Eileen spent the few months after the storm trying to line up all of the normal details of a wedding in a city where nothing was open and wondering whether any of this really mattered compared to how much everyone else had lost. Eileen would come in from the mall or dress-fitting or the florist's and pick up Tessie and just hug her forever.

I suppose I must also mention myself. My university cancelled the semester, butI came back to the city anyway. I came back for the people in this house and for the rest of the People of Praise. My brothers and sisters needed me, and I had to be here. I helped gut half a dozen houses and became Tessie's best friend. It was the best thing I've ever done with a few months in my life, but not because of the fuzzy feeling you get when you do something for someone else. I've never lived so closely with any other group of people in my life. We were all raw and helpless at the same moment, and we all knew exactly what it felt like. We were one people without having to work for it. It just was.

Kingdom Come

2006-01-25T14:44:00.000-08:00

It's quite simple. It's never been so simple. And you can't tell me it's just because I'm the one who came back.

The entire world stretched out in sepia like The Wizard of Oz in reverse and we overlaid it with color-coded maps of waters and deaths, shrinking from clarity.

It doesn't take a genius. A tree fell on the roof of the house where the wise man lived who put his heirlooms in the attic to save them from flooding. Barges crashed into perfect levees where no corrupt men took shortcuts. A fragile old woman in flip-flops climbs a rubble pile three times as tall as she is to find a hand painted cabinet covered in black mold and declare, "But it's so beautiful".

Is mold the enemy or the ally of the gutter? Both return sheet rock to the piles of dust it was made of, leaving the house naked. The mold calls forth the gutter who ekes the laundered house into existance. The moldy drywall ends in the same pile with the dust mask. You can hide in that rubble mountain until FEMA comes, but not in the wall-less bathroom.

We have seen the dark side of the moon and lived there. We have looked on the bent heads of billboards and seen the nothing they hid behind them. We have watched the wind toss about miniblinds in cubicles that never before saw the light of day in skyscrapers turned jack-o-lanterns by broken windows. What bogeymen are left to us? "The Big One" came and left us and we lived.

Our hearts sliced in half have cleaved like slugs to the first thing they hit, the one and only thing left standing, human, sweaty, divine, and we have found it good and unsullied. Lizards leave behind their eggshells in the sodden insulation, discarding disguises for skin. Overlays are not needed where flowers of every color spring up from bacteria-ridden sepia soil.

A Statement on the City

2006-01-18T13:32:00.000-08:00

I was never a New Orleanian until after the storm. Everyone tiptoed around me in Colorado, sneaking furtive stares. "Her city has died," they whispered. "Look at her crying." And then New Orleans was my city, and I had to be in it. Because they did not understand. Because my city could not be dead. Because it belonged in this bowl they all said it should never have been built in. Because it was not I who cried, but the city.

One Story Universe

2006-01-13T13:33:00.000-08:00

One story universe - God is not someone far away, watching, taking notes, and perhaps occasionally granting requests. He is not someone who sits on the second floor of a house while we muddle about on the first floor cooking and fighting with each other and perhaps yelling up the stairs for help once in a while. No! God took on our flesh and came and lived among us. God is on the first story of the house with us telling jokes and enjoying the company. God is here! God is now!