An Easter Prayer for Pearlington

It's the dead of night and I cannot sleep. I find myself at my keyboard, somewhat overwhelmed. There is so much to do here and it seems to take so much to get even a little something done.

If the whole world could come to a place like Pearlington, they would understand what it is we witness here; what it means to lose everything by an act of God and then to try and hold bravely onto one's Faith. Words like dignity, integrity, trust and hope take on new meanings; no longer vague abstractions, but the stuff of everyday challenge to understand their meanings and to walk them in the world. Faith really isn't Faith until it's ALL you're holding onto. Hope is the daily waiting, looking at the mess that was once your life and praying someone will come to help. Many people in this town are holding on to both, like two life preservers keeping them afloat in a sea of broken dreams.

They never expected us here, never needed us here, but they need and want us now. Some are too proud to ask for help, some ask for too much. Many are manifesting some version of post-traumatic stress and we need to be gentle with them. And with ourselves. We can't do everything, only what we can and it serves no purpose to burn out on the altar of service. I remember back in November thinking I hadn't called home in a couple of days and almost resenting the fact that I should. It was then that I realized I was at risk of "going native," of over-identifying with the good people of Pearlington, as if they were MY people, MY town. As a therapist it's a dangerous spot to be in and a sure sign of Compassion Fatique. I had come to care so much, to be so busy on their behalf, to want to help and make the monster go away.

Now I'm back once again, rested, with a healthier perspective and still I feel their pain. It shouldn't be so hard to get some paint, some plywood, some nails. Simple things that would merely occasion a short trip to the Home Depot, but magnified 1600-fold - is daunting. And that's just Pearlington. If I only share with you the karaoke, the crab boils and the fried turkey; only talk about miracles of resource meeting need; only sound up and happy and that it is all easy, I would minimize the experiences of both resident and volunteer alike. Don't get me wrong: Karaoke Nights in the fall were fun, but I actually intended it as group therapy for all of us.

Tomorrow, I will arise and put my customary smile on my face and rejoin the adventure. I am an optimist by nature and I believe in the power of the human Spirit. I believe in all the volunteers who come here to help because that very same Spirit called them to this journey. I'm proud to be a part of this volunteer community and a friend to the people of Pearlington.

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. Grant us the resources to fairly distribute to those truly in need of the materials required to rebuild Faith and Hope. As leaders and volunteers, grant us the ability to stay focused and healthy, leading by example and staying determined, organized and co-operative with each other. Guide us to the creation of 1600 miracles, 1600 opportunities to show we care, 1600 ways to find what we need to do this job. God, place the invitation in the hearts of all good people to come and join the Dance, each in the way they can do best, by sharing the abundance of this great continent with our brothers and sisters of all faiths and ancestries and beliefs in this little bayou town.

It's Easter and Christ will rise again. As will Pearlington.

Amen.

Dancing with Katrina....April 9, 2006

Little by little, on a shoestring and with Faith, we are loving the battered and once-forgotten town of Pearlington, Mississippi back to life.

It is my fourth trip here and things have changed. The noise of hammers and saws are everywhere and there is a hopeful feeling in the air. Groups from all over North America roll in and out of town, Perfect Strangers walking their talk and putting their money where their mouths are. Young people and old alike clamber through houses, cleaning and mucking out, while roofs get repaired, studs de-moulded and dry wall floated. We are a long way from being finished, but the good people of Pearlington know we will not let them down and their tears wash over us and cleanse us in a way nothing else could.

It's a simple Dream really, to want four walls and a roof you can call your own. A safe place where your children are warm and dry, with a shelf to put the very few things Katrina spared. It's not an unreasonable thing to want, yet it has proven almost impossible for the very government organizations created to achieve it. The task has fallen to this wonderful team of Dream Builders, these ordinary men and women who flock to Pearlington from the safety of their own homes and families. They labour with love and are aware they are not changing the world, but they are - most assuredly - changing THEIR world. As they give, they are given more. As they love, they are loved more. As they serve, they are served as well.

And the Circle of Life turns, as God watches and smiles.

This is what Katrina invited us to become. This is what the people of the world can do when they are called to it. This is the group of Tsunami survivors from Indonesia who arrived last week to help the people of Pearlington rebuild. This is Baptists and Presbyterians, Mennonites and Methodists, whites and blacks standing together, shouldering the responsibility of something they did not create but that needs repair. This is Dream School, alive and vibrant, faithful and hopeful and singing "I Hope You Dance" while dancing. This is the sun on the bayou and Jambalaya and Banana Pudding. This is Life and Love and it has never been more worth living.

Yesterday we held a memorial for Dr. Sidney Strickland, an old and disabled man who died last week when his FEMA trailer burned to the ground. I fought hard to get him that trailer and out of the Red Cross shelter, never knowing my efforts would end this way. The normal cycles of life continue unabated; children are born and people die, made more real and poignant by the situation. This is the cost of opening oneself up and breaking your own heart on purpose. This is Faith incarnate.

The blog I created while managing the Recovery Centre in November has proven to be a remarkable tool for organizing the relief effort from afar and communicating between groups. Look at it, if you choose, at http://www.pearlington.blogspot.com . More than a thousand people do every week and are inspired to keep helping. They do it because they can and will. They do it because, like all Dream Builders, they are sowing the seeds of their own Dreams.

Dream School International will be making an important announcement after my return to Canada on the 18th. Stay tuned. Stay awake and ready to share in all the bounty this adventure has provided me.

I hope YOU dance.

Faith Revisited

My journeys to Pearlington have been journeys of Faith; Faith that my going had meaning and Faith that each and every moment I could do my part to enable resource to meet need. It’s been one of the most personally meaningful experiences of my life and has taught me much about introducing resource to need within the context of my own life and that of my family and work.

As I explore Faith and as I observe and experience its movement in my life, I would like to share with you what I have learned, so far:

1. The antithesis, the opposite, of Faith is Control. Control is an illusion and it always has been. We are not in control of anyone or anything. We are often just barely in control of ourselves. Those of us who have danced with Katrina know surely that we cannot control the weather. What we can do is adapt, by surrendering to it or getting out of its way. It is the same with everything; we adapt or resist. Resistance has always caused us pain and loss, for resistance is an attempt at control and we insist on thinking we can control things that are way beyond our capacity to alter or affect. When we accept this simple truth we can find peace and power in the adaptations we choose - the shelter, the raincoat, the umbrella. But we will not stop the shower, nor should we. Surrendering to the inevitability of actions being taken outside ourselves and adapting, by allowing the experience or by getting out of its way, is the definition of wisdom and an expression of Faith. There is a reason it rains and thunders, even if we cannot see it in the moment. If you watch closely, you will begin to see the reasons - even for Katrina - and you will grow.

2. Faith is “becoming.” It is not “Look what I did!” but rather “Look who I am becoming!” In my practice, the question “Who will I be then?” is the one most frequently asked by those facing change. It becomes a fearful question, an unknown destination that seems to rail at all our training in outcome-based learning since kindergarten - a system almost completely devoid of Faith. Faith, like life, is a journey - not a destination. We must take ourselves on, for we will “become” who we already are, just more so. If we don’t like some parts of who we are, we must challenge ourselves to out-grow our skins, so that who we become is someone of whom we can be humbly proud. Faith is “becoming” and is in the present tense. If you have already “become” - you are done. As Richard Bach says: “Here’s test to know if your work on earth is done: if you’re still alive, it isn’t.”

3. There is a razor-thin line between Faith and Denial. Faith is authentic and requires an authenticity of being. Denial is another illusion. Authenticity requires us to honour our feelings - especially as men - and to respect what it is we really think. It calls us to never settle for less than what we truly want and need. It means we must be on the path to knowing ourselves and to never let others steal our Dreams. Faith is not pretending things are fine when they are not. That’s denial, because Faith demands rigorous self-honesty. Faith requires questioning of everything about us, not in criticism or blame, rather for information and evaluation.

4. Faith is readiness. Faith is the lover yet to appear on your porch; open your heart before you open the door. Faith is the friend yet to eat at your board; prepare the table with your favourite meal. Faith is the good deed you’ve yet to do; ready yourself with a good deed to you. Faith is a future yet to unfold; unfold yourself, so it might find you.

5. Faith is “allowing.” If you knew how to allow it, you would have by now. Face yourself and ask for help. Let go of the past, it anchors you to who you are not. Choose the option that sets you free, not the one that encumbers you further, no matter whose voice you hear in your head, whose face you see in your mind’s eye, what fear you feel in your heart. Why walk when you could fly? Ask yourself this question: “What would Faith do?” What choice would I make if I truly believed, without evidence, that I was doing the right thing for me? Don’t fully trust your head; it can be deceived and its truth is only what you believe today. Don’t fully trust your eyes; the world is full of wool. Don’t even fully trust your feelings; they are often echoes of the past. Do trust your instincts, your intuition. For if prayer is how we talk to God, intuition is how God talks to us. Then just do it and feel your heart start beating. If it feels like fear, you may very well be on the right path.


I return to Pearlington, Mississippi next Tuesday for a third dance with Katrina. And nestled, not quite forgotten, in the extreme southwest of the magnolia state - like the only marble in the corner of a bag - I will continue my journey of Faith.

Janet's Gift

I told the story some time ago of “Sally,” the woman whose brother was killed helping her clean out from under Hurricane Katrina.

Her real name is Susie Sharp and I ended up staying for the last three weeks of my tour in a trailer on her property. She told me then that she had a new phone line, as she rented land out for a microwave station on her spread. She told me that there was unlimited long distance calling available and that I should use the phone in the trailer anytime I wanted.

So, I did. I called Marian for coffee in the morning and a chat before bed. I e-mailed and posted and did research on the internet. After I returned home, Eileen Powers used Susie’s trailer and went to use the phone one night. It had been cut off. Apparently, that free long distance was for calls within the US only! They wanted more than $1000 for the bill....

Susie spoke with them and worked a fee per call deal that lowered the bill to $200. I called her and told her I would look after it. She told me to wait until she actually got the bill. In the meantime, a local woman caught wind of this, and on Susie’s and my behalf, paid it in full.

Here is a bit of her story:

“I know Susie. She is one of the hardest working women that you will ever meet. She has had a rough year. Lost her husband, then her brother, now her business and her home. I can't tell you how much HOPE that you give to Pearlington. Every time someone comes into town to help it shows that someone does care and that we can move ahead. It is so hard to sit in the muck and the mire day after day and try to dig ourselves out of this destruction.

I stayed for the storm with my father, husband and 14 year old son. We got on my father’s shrimp boat by jet ski and flat boat, in the eye of the storm - quite an experience. We lost my parent’s newly rebuilt home, originally destroyed in a fire in 2003, and the home that my husband and I were building. It's not a total loss. We can gut and rebuild. The frame is good, but no insurance. We have had a lot of help from individuals and private Christian groups. We could never have done what we have without their help. I don't have a lot of money and can never pay forward all of the help that has been given.

I am blessed to have a government job (I am just a peon here but I have a job). I also now have a car and because I work for the Navy, they have rented me a 32 foot travel trailer for $1.00 a day, which I get reimbursed for at the end of each month. I also have HOPE from individuals who show that they care. I will never be able to repay or pay forward all that has been given to me and my family. If you think of anything else that I can do, please contact me.

Janet Dawson
Resident of Pearlington, MS”


Thank you, Janet. Those calls saved my sanity and helped me do what I do. Thank you for caring, in the midst of your own challenges.

Dancing with Katrina

I am never sure who actually reads this blog, but I have decided to continue nonetheless. In fact, I have decided to turn my experiences and observations into a book.

The working title is: Dancing with Katrina and I have begun.

It will be a chronicle of my adventures in Pearlington, as well as a personal study of how such a thing affects the people caught up in it, the volunteers who come to serve them and the wisdom of providing relief and recovery from a non-governmental perspective.

There will be stories and pictures, survivor accounts that represent the experiences of the community and an inside look at what really happened in Pearlington in the time I was there.

I write this as a tribute to the resilience of Survivors everywhere and as an encouragement to all who serve, and who help such people become Thrivers.

I'll keep you posted.

Why we do those things we do....

Reports continue to flow in from Pearlington, a situation in constant flux as the town struggles to recover after Katrina.

I find remarkable the calibre of volunteers this disaster has attracted and what they are willing to do to help. So many have put their own lives on hold and have reached deep into their personal pockets to find the resources to come and help. Very few of them are free of the burden of earning their own living, yet have been willing to put their careers and their income on hold while they lend a hand. Some have risked their personal safety; some have left their families and their children behind to deal with the loneliness of being far from home in a somewhat foreign land.

We all have our own reasons for doing so. There is a common thread however, and in my observation the majority of us do it because it’s the right thing to do and because we have faith that we can and will make a difference: a difference to those we serve and a difference to ourselves. We want to know we mattered and that our lives counted in a way that’s meaningful to us. We want to lay upon our final bed and scan our lives, looking for bright spots and moments that mattered. We want to have adventure and challenge in our lives, not because most of us are too intense for normal living, but because we know that when our minds and hearts narrow to a single beam of light focussed on a simple outcome, we can create miracles.

And we like each other. We serve together in a trench of our own making and we rise above our differences and find what’s common to us all. We love and protect each other because we have to and want to and because we recognize that same spark in each other. When we fail, we are picked up. When we win, we share the celebration. The wisest among us concentrate solely on the mission and put all other considerations aside. We try our best to subvert our egos and work well with others. We rise quickly to our proper spot in the scheme of things that is a reflection of our skills and talents and we flourish there as the days unfold.

When we go home, and as we scramble to rebuild what our adventure cost us, we are changed. We remember how fast we worked and wish we had done more. We miss the excitement and the working together and know, deep in our hearts, we may never see each other again. We are sad it’s over - and glad we’re home - and wondering what comes next. We have “seen the elephant” and it will not be unseen. We are angry that the whole world wasn’t there with us, even as we fully understand why they couldn’t and shouldn’t be. We stitch ourselves together again, squeezing back into the spot in time we left, or wisely staying expanded and creating a new spot. We mourn for what we saw and heard and for the companionship we felt for Perfect Strangers.

Then, we take a deep breath and pray for the chance to do it all again.

Faith - Chapter Three - Holly's Library

When Holly entered the Pearl*Mart that morning, I could tell she was on a mission. She had a determined look on her face which surprised me; she usually tended to act shyly and would try to get her mother to ask me questions for her. Anyone who knows me knows that doesn’t work with me and that I always encourage children to speak for themselves. This day, she was accompanied by another young girl and needed to talk to me right away.

“Canada Jon,” she said, “what are you going to do with those books Frank cleaned out of the school and with those other books that have come in?” I hadn’t thought about it at all. I told her we would probably save them until the school board figured out what they would do with the Library that had been destroyed and was now our Shelter.

“Why,” I asked?

“Because the library was my life and I spent all my time there. It meant everything to me.” She looked like she was going to cry.

“How about we make a special shelf in the Pearl*Mart and put the books there?” I suggested lamely. Not good enough. She looked around at the shelves dubiously.

“And how would we lend them out?” she asked quietly.

OK, this was getting complicated. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe we could find a place to put them and create a little library?” I was stretching now.

“That might work,” she said. “But who would be the librarian?”

I looked in her eyes and she looked right back. “Why do I get the impression that you think that person should be you?” I asked.

She smiled.

I told her I would see what I could do. She’d been followed into the Pearl*Mart by John Olsakovsky, the current Shelter Manager. He’d overhead the whole exchange. “Your wings are showing,” he said, or something like that. Great, I thought. Now I’m an Angel and I just made a promise to a little girl. I had no idea how I was going to pull it off, but I had faith that something would come up for her.

I held Holly’s wish in the back of my mind for many days. As the month wore on I would think of it from time to time and wonder how I could do it. From time to time Holly would come in the Pearl*Mart and look at me with expectant eyes and I would smile, give her a little hug and remind her to have faith. But, my time in Pearlington was coming to an end. On Thanksgiving, as I was driving into the field to park my car for the day, I spied Konrad and his team, building sheds for the people of the town. I stopped and asked him if I could buy one from him for Holly. “Sounds like a worthy cause to me,” he said. “Leave it with me.” His team had already been joined by Eileen Powers, a fellow Canadian and friend who had driven down the day before to join the effort. Eileen had just given me a Tim Hortons coffee cup to use as a “homing beacon” (wry Canadian humour).

By Friday morning, the day I was leaving, the shed was well under way. They decided to build it completely from wood, instead of corrugated on the sides and roof as the other sheds had been built. They wrapped the inside carefully with Tyvek to keep the books dry. They built shelves inside and Eileen painted the whole thing white, one of the few colours of paint we had. On the door, she and Dallas and the others painted, in curving red letters: “Holly’s Library.”

As it approached completion and as I readied to leave, I called Holly at home. I got her mother’s cell phone and was disappointed to find they were in Louisiana for the day. I asked to speak with Holly.

“Holly, when you return home, please come to the school. I have a surprise for you. Ask for Miss Powers.”

“OK,” she responded in a confused voice.

“And Holly,” I said quietly, “always remember that Dreams DO come true.”

By all accounts, Holly was stunned into silence when she arrived at the school Saturday morning. When she got over her shock, she began moving the books out of storage and into her new library. She posted a sign saying that the lending library would soon be open. She would let no one help her, handling the dolly and lifting the boxes herself. Holly was now The Librarian.

In 1996, while living in the former Soviet Union lecturing and developing my Dream School program, the Soviet press labelled me, in Russian, “... nothing but a Big Dreamer.” The name stuck and those who know me very well know how much I love that handle. If a Big Dreamer can’t help make a young girl’s Dream come true, then what kind of a Dreamer is he, anyway? Holly’s Library is a symbol to the town of Pearlington:

Never give up. Have faith in the timing and rightness of all things. Hold on tight to your Dreams.

Thanks Conrad, Tim and crew. Thanks Eileen and Dallas. Cheers, Holly. I hope you light up the world with your smile and your faith.

Thanks for helping this Big Dreamer be 3 for 3.