Heart and Heartache

One of my favorite things about serving at Camp Restore is the fact that I get to meet so many people from all over the country and become friends with them. Two weeks ago a volunteer group from Wheelock College in Boston stayed at Camp Restore. While they stayed here I hung out with them, and in doing so I met Sam.

I met Sam because he was looking for a place to meditate. I showed him an empty room and a closet. He took the closet. Two days later Sam and a few others from his group helped prep, serve, and clean up dinner with me and my supervisor.

Well, later on that night I was sitting with my computer, trying to write something. Anything. Sam entered the room and asked if he could sit with me. I said yes, having given up on my attempt to eek words out of my brain. So, Sam and I started talking. We talked about how much we loved New Orleans and Camp Restore and the service it provides to the city. We talked about all the ways we had seen love in the world. At some point it came up that I loved writing, and especially loved writing poetry. Turns out, Sam loves writing poetry, too.

Long story short, we ended up writing a poem together about New Orleans and service. We wanted to share it, so we performed it the next night at an open mic night at a bar called Buffas.

Now we'd like to share it with you.

Hearts hurt, the world is hurt.

There are broken, broken things.

I want to spread love, to write love notes on the fresh soft concrete and wilting abandoned buildings

I am so empty - there is so

Much fix-it in my veins but fix-it

Can’t fix all this pain.

And sometimes I feel lonely, feel

The world forgets it’s broken streets,

Broken people, broken dreams.

Sometimes I feel as if lives and love are forgotten in wasted days,

Feel I’m the only one who sees, who tries and strives to heal.

I’m sending love

through this mud

I patch the drywall with

through this trim

with which I frame windows and doors

through pink itchy insulation

Which will keep warm this soon-to-be home

I’m walking with love

Through these Big Easy streets

on these warm Mississippi shores

rubbled and torn by storms

by storms

by storms

And yet I woke this morning

To a bright shining light.

I climbed the water table

stacked high as the floods that flooded crescent park

and looked out over the city

red and bleeding

purple and royal

filled with the glow of the setting sun

I woke to the voices of those come

To serve, they come with hands

Made to get dirty, with hearts so full of love

This city is their garden that they water with their love.

Their love is hammer and nails

Rebuilding hearts and homes broken twelve years ago

In a storm too strong

Their love is work hard and well,

With, without thanks.

I serve with love

Ladling Jambalaya and corn

For the hungry sojourners searching for truth

Who travel from all across this country god blessed and cursed

splintered and divided

blue sky and storm battered

They come

Because they haven't forgotten those baptised

By the breached levees

Their love is beautiful and true - their love

Is making this world, this city, these people,

Me

New

I’m listening with love

to the words like doves that flutter to my ears

with every syllable the storytellers of the city utter into this world

these words are ambassadors of peace

they are pleas for action

They are both peaceful

and fierce

They peer at us through eyes that have seen

have witnessed

have felt promised lands and abandoned promises

I woke this morning and saw light in darkness,

Loving souls ready to mend their own brokenness

By serving others.

Their love is a gift from their patchwork hearts,

Broken and stitched together again and again,

Every day and every day, until the morning blooms

Over the river and the empty lots, over a cathedral spire,

Their love graces the city like the sunrise, every morning new.

Their love is an offering of hope despite grief,

A weapon against these long hard years.

Their love is God’s Love, shining through them

Like light through clouds and trees

I’m holding love

as I hold you, stranger

your stories all so new to me

but beautiful as this crescent city

cast in the last hallelujahs of dusk

this city, where crumbling concrete walls

become an artist’s playground

where music arises like flames from the broken remains of houses

where people left, and returned

for jazz bands that appear without warning

and perform their rhythm and magic in the streets

where lives connect and explode in a show of brilliant fireworks that spark spontaneously throughout this city

where poverty cries right next to riches,

Cries that rarely reach these soundproofed lives

But have made to the ears of these loving souls

Coming ready to give, and receive

There is fix-it in my veins and theirs, and when I see them

I see me

Trying, striving

Loving, loved.

I love with my eyes

and my heart

the heartache

and the sparkling eyes

of New Orleans

Hearts hurt, the world hurts.

There are broken, broken things, but

I woke this morning and all I could see was love.

Until next time, we're just living minute by minute....

Prayer Requests:

- Some changes are coming to our life at Camp Restore. Please pray that we adapt easily and love well through it.