A View from Louisiana

Love and Death and Prayer in the Ruins

by J. Mark Christian

We live about an hour away from metropolitan New Orleans, Louisiana.

Helicopters are presently passing over our home in Baton Rouge – one after the other, some military, some civilian. In the past week, the population of our adopted city has grown by over 100,000. Every main thoroughfare is clogged like a perpetual rush hour. Many of the evacuees are driving around the city, everyone seems to be on their mobile phones, frustrated by the recurring busy signals and “all circuits are busy” messages. Many more are in shelters: some provided by civil government, others by churches.

Many are dying. Reports from New Orleans depict corpses floating in the muckish, polluted water, others abandoned on interstate overpasses, others left in makeshift graves fashioned from tarp and bricks, marked with spray paint in the desperate hope that someone, someday will find their loved one and provide proper burial.

In The Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John Climacus tells us that “the monk has a body made holy, a tongue purified, a mind enlightened. Asleep or awake, the monk is a soul pained by the constant remembrance of death.”

My body is tired, my tongue is tied, my mind is clouded by too much information, too much upheaval, too much traffic. Yet asleep and awake, my soul is pained by the constant remembrance of death… and destruction… and displacement.

Many have observed that it all seems so inexplicable, so surreal. At our home we had heavy wind, a number of branches fell, power was out for just over a day. Compared to the devastation to the east, we were unscathed. My children complained because the cable TV was out for almost a week. I struggled to explain that there are worse things than missing Sponge Bob Square Pants. But I don’t fault them for their complaints; I realize that it’s not just about Sponge Bob. They want normalcy. And everything, at varying degrees, is so utterly abnormal.

Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

Over thirty years ago, the novelist Walker Percy (another Louisianan by adoption) began his novel Love in the Ruins with a question that conveys the apocalyptic mood that suffuses this part of the world:

Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I cam to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?

Has “it” happened? Is this the way the world ends? Not with a bang or a whimper, but with wind and rain and fire and flood? For countless Louisianans, their world has ended. Will they build another one?

The church where we worship – St. Basil’s Orthodox in Metairie – is almost certainly flooded. We still don’t know for sure. We went to Liturgy on Sunday in a little Greek chapel here in Baton Rouge. The place was packed: Greeks from New Orleans, Antiochians from Metairie… the priest was Romanian, an IOCC representative. He celebrated in English, the cantor responded in Greek. The congregation stood in prayer, disjointed, displaced, unsure what to make of it all, some crying, some unable to enter the temple because of their grief. They stood outside, wanting to be a part of things, but overwhelmed by the fact that their life in New Orleans isn’t there for them any more. As we read in the Ladder, their souls are pained by the constant reminder of death and destruction.

Months ago, I remember reading David Hart’s editorial in the Wall Street Journal reflecting on the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia. His words have stayed with me, perhaps so that I can remember them now… how Orthodox Christians believe that we exist in “the long melancholy aftermath of a primordial catastrophe,” in a broken and wounded world that languishes in bondage to principalities and powers – spiritual and terrestrial – alien to God. And yet, the incarnate God entered His world to rescue “the beauties of creation from the torments of a fallen nature.”

Hart reminded his readers that when we are confronted with the sheer immensity of worldly suffering, we are permitted only to hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance that shatter living souls. For now, we must remember that creation is in agony in its bonds, divided between two kingdoms, and that only charity will sustain us against “fate.” For now, I’m trying to remember all of that.

We’ll do what we can to “love in the ruins.”

And we’ll keep saying our prayers:

Crossing the waters as on dry land,
In that way escaping From the evils of Egypt’s land,
The Israelites cried out exclaiming:
To our Redeemer and God, now let us sing.

Most Holy Theotokos save us.

With many temptations surrounding me,
Searching for salvation,
I have hastened unto you;
O Mother of the Word, and ever‑Virgin,
From all distresses and dangers deliver me.

Most Holy Theotokos save us.

Assaults of the passions have shaken me,
My soul to its limits
Has been filled with much despair;
Bring peace, O Maiden, in the calmness,
Of your own Son and your God, all‑blameless One.

Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

To God and the Savior you’ve given birth;
I ask you, O Virgin,
From the dangers deliver me;
For now I run to you for refuge,
With both my soul and my reasoning.

Now and forever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.