by Gary Payton

September 21, 2005 — My work, for now, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast is finished. Tomorrow, I begin my journey home. It will be a journey taking me from the 90 degree heat of the deep South to the wonderful coolness of North Idaho where snow dusted Schweitzer Mountain last week. It will also be a journey taking me from the massive destruction of Hurricane Katrina to family and friends I love dearly.

Our Presbyterian Disaster Assistance team, in cooperation with so very many others from Mississippi and Alabama, has been about a minor miracle here. The volunteer camp at Gautier, just east of Biloxi, hosts almost a hundred folks working in the damaged community daily. By tonight, the camp in D'Iberville will be ready to receive a hundred more. Work continues on a location in nearby Gulfport, and the extraordinary relief operation based at the church in Diamondhead continues to provide life renewing assistance to people all across southwest Mississippi.

While I return proud of what our small group of volunteers accomplished in less than two weeks, it is the life lessons that will stay with me forever.

Human kindness is an extraordinary force. On a personal level, a smile, an offer of cold water, a hug for the weary can melt away the difficulties of the moment and create the space for two persons to interact at a deep and meaningful level. A sharp tongue, meanness, selfishness do none of this.

The gifts of our individuality brought together in group activity can produce wondrous things. The task of leaders is acknowledging those gifts in others and setting them free for the benefit of many.

And, I have relearned the extraordinary lesson of "enoughness" first shared with me by Sister Joan Chittister. Interpreting St. Benedict she has written, "the goal of life is not to amass things but to get the most out of whatever little we have...If we can learn to love life where we are, in what we have, then we will have room in our souls for what life alone does not have to offer." The lesson of "enoughness" is a lesson our modern America needs badly to learn. Captured by our passion to acquire, we have used resources of others far in excess of our needs, rather in response to our wants. Interacting with people from Mississippi who have lost all their material possessions accented "enoughness" as nothing else could ever do.

Yesterday, I saw a Bradford pear tree blooming in Ocean Springs, Mississippi amidst the damaged buildings. Hurricane winds confuse the trees. The shock of the storm ends their yearly cycle as if fall and winter had set in. Yet, when calm returns the trees act as if it were spring. New flowers bloom today as if it were March and April.

For those along the Gulf Coast who stop to observe, the flowering trees represent new life after the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina, new life emerging from disaster and hopelessness. Whether viewed as biology or theology, the spring time blooming of the Bradford pear trees in deep September gives us hope for the future and renews us for the labors of reconstruction ahead.