Thoughts and prayers for the hurricane's dispossessed

The McCormick Tribune Foundation is matching donations to Katrina relief by half, for those of you who have thought about giving. The irrepressible hope and faith in a better future expressed by hurricane victims in all media is humbling, and deserves a long memory. For all, please say strong and long-lasting prayers for the dispossessed of the hurricane. Their need will likely outweigh our country's attention to it.

Those of us not directly affected by the storm, once we've done everything we can to help those who are, have the luxury of taking a moment to watch how America responds in crisis. By and large, we will deserve our self-given reputation as a generous people, shelling out money, supplies, and time and opening our homes and schools to those in need. The real test of our moral mettle will come after the cleanup, as the South struggles to support a refugee class unlike anything, I think, since freed slaves migrated north during Reconstruction. Thousands of people with nothing all crowding cities at once, straining social services and demanding their human birthright of care and sustenance--this will be a struggle for host states, who will have less of an incentive to magnanimous gestures once the media spotlight is elsewhere. Will we be strong enough, as a country, to gain and sustain compassion for a crowd of people who look like us, talk like us, and have had everything, perhaps even loved ones, ripped away from them? Or will that be too much for us, and will the dispossessed suffer even more through our benign neglect?

It takes courage to look suffering in the face. I've always thought that some people's compulsion to talk about tragedy, or to over-consume the news, stems from a kind of survivor guilt. The impetus to witness to the pain of others is natural and holy, but in a case where the pain is already known to the entire nation, the constant redux of witnessing can give us a false sense of having done something, perhaps allowing us to excuse ourselves from being truly changed by what we have seen. It's all right to stand around and say "Yes, isn't it terrible?": it's part of the way we deal. But let's go beyond that to asking ourselves how we can provide for those whose need will outweigh their media attention, how we can work toward building a society ready to welcome the stranger, how we should live in a world in which goods, loves or life itself can suddenly be snatched.

Mysterious and ever-present God,
You desire life and safety for your children, and grieve when they suffer.
You do not will destruction, but you are present even in its midst.
You are with us in our loss and need and fear and helpless pity.
You call us insistently to turn to you,
enfolding us in arms of love.
Though our fears cling like a passing dream, you comfort us still.
Gentle and ever-giving God,
Break through in this moment as never before.
Raise us from our knees to stand taller in your eyes,
with broken hearts readier to love,
with emptied hands readier to give,
who have known helplessness, ready to trust.
May your Spirit show our fears vicarious and real for what they are,
nothing beside your presence, your realness, your continuity.
In union with you is freedom from fear and existence beyond death.
Draw us into that union that we may bless ourselves and others.
We pray for those who are lost to us but not to you, for you know all your children's souls and welcome them to you.
Grant us these things as we turn to you in our need.
Amen.