Bird By Bird

Katie Cashwell writes...

A few weeks before leaving for New Orleans I was at U of R listening to faith writer Anne LaMott reflect on her writing life, spirituality, grace, and an assortment of faith topics. Anne recalled a story about her younger brother having to work on a school project when they were children. Her brother had to identify dozens of birds and put together a booklet of them. In a moment of being overwhelmed with the task ahead and the huge amount of birds he had to identify, Anne's father looked at her brother and said, "Just take it bird by bird." One step at a time. One bird at a time. Bird by bird. Eventually you'll have all the birds identified.

Bird by bird is certainly the motto to live by here in post-Katrina New Orleans. The rebuilding process is slow and it requires much work and patience. There is no other way to do the work other than one day at a time, one house at a time, one paint brush stroke at a time. I remember during the year that I lived here I would finish gutting a house with a group of volunteers (the process of removing flooded and destroyed household items and then bringing down the moldy walls, "initiating reconstruction" is what Andrew and Ginny call it) and I'd walk out on the street and look to my left and look to my right, and all I could see in either direction were blocks upon blocks of flooded homes that still needed to be worked on. I would feel so frustrated and so overwhelmed. My one house gutting job seemed insignificant in the grand scheme of things. How was this city ever going to come back? How long was it going to take? How many hands touching houses were needed? Were peoples hearts really big enough to keep giving and going to New Orleans? Did homeowners and volunteers have enough patience to charge ahead and keep those hammers swinging? These were the questions I asked in 2006, and these are still the questions I ask now, two years later, as I move about this broken but beautiful city with 12 new friends.

Bird by bird seems to not only carry the answer, but the grace and the hope that New Orleans needs right now. It is going to be a long time for New Orleans to come back to its pre-Katrina days. Even then it won't be the same. But it will be done one day at a time, one prayer at a time, one nail at a time. When our group leaves two days from now our work and time here, in many ways, will be a drop in the bucket of rebuilding. But it is a drop. It is one more bird identified. Overtime enough drops and enough birds identified will fill up that bucket and finish that project. Another group will come after us next week and add their drop and identify their birds. They will add their paints and their nails, their trim work and their sanding, to ours. So perhaps it is in filling the bucket and identifying the birds that defines what the Body of Christ is in New Orleans right now.

Oscar Romero (Catholic archbishop who was assassinated in El Salvador during a mass service) captures this "bird by bird" idea quite well in his prayer, Prophets of A Future Not Our Own. So I will leave you all with his words. Peace and love from the bayou!

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a small fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about: We plant the seeds that will one day grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it well. It may be incomplete but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.