Unique and complicated

Unique, interesting, and charming—these are great descriptors for the Crescent City.

But it is also tough duty these days to live here, and we do ourselves no favors by insisting otherwise.

I just spoke to a former resident who relocated and is enjoying the experience of "normal"—a landscape without Katrina litter.

Every time I drive through New Orleans East, particularly at Read Boulevard, I fight a surge of despair. The vacancy—empty frames and windswept lots and abandoned medical facilities and sparse population—thunders with emotional and physical challenges for our people.

And it wears on us all whether we are directly involved in rebuilding or whether we are trying to do life without reference to the greatest devastation of our times.

Encouragement flows, as it always does, through healthy relationships of mutual support. Family and friendship circles sustain us. Tempting as it may be when we are weary, when we are conserving our energies, we should not withdraw from the oasis of loving connections. Now we need our dinner parties and holiday gatherings and summer vacations and backyard barbeques more than ever before.
Do not waste energy blaming those who have relocated. Instead, view the rebuilding of New Orleans as a great relay with many runners. Some carry the baton for short distances. Others invest for the long haul. Every assignment in this setting is unique to the individual gifts and temperament. We are not "abandoned" when friends leave. That is simply one stop on the road to getting healthy when we are grieving.

And we are grieving, make no mistake, each in his own way. The losses continue to weigh heavy upon us and our community. At some point we must accept the realities of our new way of life, create and sustain the new relationships that are required, and settle into a pace that we can manage for the years to come. Anger, resentment, and jealousy work against our greatest good and must be rejected in favor of contentment (not resignation), peace (not inactivity), and joy in the journey.

Can people be healthy and happy in the wake of great devastation? Of course they can. Right now in New Orleans, great friendships are flourishing, marriages are growing stronger, and families are learning to lean on each other as never before.

Great teams are being built in all sectors of our economy and community. These dynamic new connections are already lifting us beyond our pre-Katrina environment in many instances. The chaos--the sloshed and sloppy soup of flooded New Orleans—together with the influx of great resources has produced here the richest seedbed in the world for new ideas, art, poetry, social structures, business relationships, and break-through alliances.

Tomorrow’s amazing advances are germinating now in our city’s slippery scramble toward its emerging order.

Some will pass up this chance of a lifetime. Some will contribute significantly from a distance or in short tenure. Others, sensing the moment laden with potential, will dive into this history-making mix and discover the wave that carries them to their greatest accomplishments.

Honestly, not everyone is cut out for post-Katrina New Orleans. But for those who want to slip "the surly bonds of earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings," for pioneer stock and cliff-dwellers, this flattened expanse of swamp by the river is the Promised Land of opportunity.

This is where we are, where we live—this bustling nexus of hope and despair, glitter and litter, yearning and possibility. Hear the saxophone on the breeze, a mournful and beautiful improvisation, a brand new tune for our times.