Reports are coming through that there could be 10,000 dead in New Orleans. If these reports are true, I believe these dead will vote. In fact, through their lifeless presence they will give policy speeches - they will indict leadership and government.
It is noteworthy, that the same site that carries Eleanor Clift's Newsweek article, A Colossal Failure of Leadership, carries the cover with the picture of a person with hands upraised in worship and the words Spirituality in America.
10,000 deaths and tens of thousands of starving, homeless people without food and water, and hundreds of thousands of internal refugees is a challenge not only to local, state, and federal administrations but a challenge to a comfortable western church as well.
The crisis of the Gulf Coast should leave no one unmoved or unmotivated. The needs-meeting goes on now in terms of food, water, and shelter. Next comes jobs and schools. Then when that is all a-settled comes the grieving, the assessments, the healing, the going forward or, for some, the inability to go forward. What will be required is not just help for the individual. It is clear that structural change is needed to provide for this disaster and those disasters that come after. Please God, let those affected have energy for the demands of what lies ahead. It will be a long road.
