I'm not Powerless...Neither are You

There's something on my mind I need to write about. It has to do with when others are hurting and I feel powerless to help or change their situation. Do others feel this way sometimes?

I believe so, especially when confronted with a natural disaster or crisis that hits close to home, such as an illness or like the hurricane Katrina devastation. So many were left affected by that storm. For example, the children. I have an on-line friend (I've never met her in person) through an adoption triad support group list. It's a list from the home I was originally adopted out of, in New Orleans, in 1964. I joined the list five years ago when I was thinking about searching for my birth family (that's a whole other long story for another blog). My friend is a teacher at a school in a Louisiana Parish city an hour or so north of New Orleans. She has been writing to me about the children "survivors" the Red Cross brought into her community. Some of these children not only lost their homes but lost their parents as well. She wrote to me the other day:

"The kids at school are so restless. They want to go home, and some of them have no home or school to go too. I can't find enough words to help them out. I find myself getting frustrated, and I can only imagine how they feel. There are so many new problems to deal with. I don't think any of us anticipated the changes that would come about with devastation such as this. The classrooms are so crowded, not enough textbooks, supplies are so limited, and the children are so frustrated because they are multi-levels. The kids from public schools in New Orleans are among the lowest level in our State. Whereas our Parish, is one of the highest level school systems in the State. I think the younger children are more at an advantage than the older children. They can at least blend in a little more, and try to catch up a little easier. My heart just hurts for these kids."

I'm glad my friend writes to me personally and lets me know a real day-to-day recovery side of the story that otherwise would be lost in the greater scheme of world news these days. Here is a story of the heart, for the heart. And my heart is moved when I read what my friend writes. Yet I'm in NY, how can I possibly give of my presence and time? And, I'm a nun with no personal monies of my own significance to give towards supplies. I feel powerless to effect any sort of change in those children's lives, that they're needing right now. It's frustrating for me, and I'm just waiting for someone to say, "you can always pray."

That may be fine for you, but it is not enough for me that I only pray for these children. My friend shared with me her frustrations and her aching heart, not so I'd do anything about it, just because she needed to share her aching heart. But my own heart of compassion just won't seem to let me read it and sit on it and do nothing about it.

The world is so big. And we cannot even seem to take care of our own children. We are over in some foreign country fighting a war over oil instead of looking at our consumption of fossil fuel and using our God given creativity to come up with new ways of living so we don't have to depend on so much on those fossil fuels. I'm angry because we could be using the money we're spending over in Iraq to be taking care of our displace New Orleans children and families. President Bush gave those families $2,000 debit cards. Did he seriously think that was going to begin to get them back on their feet? They still have no homes to go back to, no jobs....nothing!

AND.....we have children who have suffered horrendous loses of home, some have lost their parents, they've lost their way of life as they knew it and they have been relocated to another community, put in a school where textbooks and supplies run short and the academic levels suddenly show the inequalities of which they've been treated in the educational system.

Where is the space for these children to grieve their loses? Where are the supplies these children need? These children should not have to be going to school frustrated every day without having supplies. Haven't they lost enough? What is wrong with this nation? Where has our compassion gone?

I may feel powerless, but I'm not powerless. I can empower myself to share this story with others locally and connect those with resources to those without. I can allow my prayer to strengthen me into action. Otherwise, my prayer and god are a powerless prayer and god.