Spiritual Sunday
How is it that American white evangelicals, who once reached out to the poor and needy, now cheer as self-proclaimed Christians like Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Texas governor Greg Abbott victimize vulnerable refugees as pawns in their political games. While we are still learning details, it appears that DeSantis used Florida taxpayer money to lure Venezuelan refugees onto an airplane with false promises of jobs and housing in Boston. They were then flown to Martha’s Vineyard, along with a photographer, and dumped without warning there.
Martha Serpa’s “Poem Found” functions as useful commentary on the spiritual emptiness of such an action. Its subject is the displaced New Orleans residents that were directed into the city’s Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. The dome reminds the poet of the “dome in the midst of the waters”—also translated as vault and firmament—in Genesis 1:6-8:
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
While the Superdome served as a refuge, it was made intentionally uninviting. Citing from Time magazine and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Wikipedia reports,
Over the years city officials have stressed that they didn’t want to make it too comfortable at the Superdome since it was always safer to leave the city altogether. “It’s not a hotel,” said the emergency preparedness director for St. Tammany Parish to the Times-Picayune in 1999.
As the Superdome filled up, it became a hellhole:
[T]here was no water purification equipment on site, nor any chemical toilets, antibiotics, or anti-diarrheals stored for a crisis. There were no designated medical staff at work in the evacuation center, no established sick bay within the Superdome, and very few cots available that hadn’t been brought in by evacuees. Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin had stated that as a “refuge of last resort,” only limited food, water, and supplies would be provided. Residents who evacuated to the Superdome were warned to bring their own supplies with them.[12]
By August 30, with no air conditioning, temperatures inside the dome had reached the 90s, and the punctured dome at once allowed humidity in and trapped it there. Tempers began to flare as hunger and thirst deepened. Food rotted inside the hundreds of unpowered refrigerators and freezers spread throughout the building. Blood and feces covered the walls of the facility. According to many, the smell inside the stadium was revolting due to the breakdown of the plumbing system, which included all toilets and urinals in the building, forcing people to urinate and defecate in other areas such as garbage cans and sinks. Some people even chose to wear medical masks to ease the smell.
The flood waters eventually reached the Dome, although they did not rise above field level. This allows Serpas to riff off the Genesis account, noting that, in this case, “the dry land land did not appear.” It might be an allusion to Noah’s flood as well.
The poet has written about the occasion of her poem,
I was seeing something like the interruption and reversal of creation, the heartless who floundered, and the strength of displaced people who lost and survived. Until then my work had focused on coastal erosion, a factor in what happened to the city, and an ongoing destruction of land and lives by encroaching water.
Those with money, of course, left the area or found better accommodations. Or as Serpas sarcastically puts it,
And God allowed those who favored themselves
born in God’s image to take dominion over
the dome and everything that creeped within it
and made them to walk to and fro above it
in their jumbo planes and in their copy rooms
and in their conference halls.
Those who claim dominion, however, are not those that most concerned Jesus, and, like him, Serpas focuses on “the poor, the addicts, the blind, and the oppressed,” “the unsightly sick and the crying young.” If she were writing about DeSantis’s political gamesmanship, she would add Venezuelan refugees to the list. Here’s the poem:
Poem Found
New Orleans, September 2005
By Martha Serpas
…And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst
of the waters” and into the dome God put
the poor, the addicts, the blind, and the oppressed.
God put the unsightly sick and the crying young
into the dome and the dry land did not appear.
And God allowed those who favored themselves
born in God’s image to take dominion over
the dome and everything that creeped within it
and made them to walk to and fro above it
in their jumbo planes and in their copy rooms
and in their conference halls. And then
God brooded over the dome and its multitudes
and God saw God’s own likeness in the shattered
tiles and the sweltering heat and the polluted rain.
God saw everything and chose to make it very good.
God held the dome up to the light
like an open locket and in every manner called
the others to look inside and those who saw
rested on that day and those who didn’t
went to and fro and walked up and down
the marsh until the loosened silt gave way
to a void, and darkness covered the faces with deep sleep.
Serpas uses the locket metaphor to capture God’s love for us. By inviting us to look at it, God gives us a chance to love our unfortunate neighbors. If we do, we will find heaven on earth.
If we don’t, on the other hand, Serpas uses an environmental image to depict our fate. Her reference is to irresponsible tree-cutting and oil development, which have devastated the marshlands that in the past served as a buffer against hurricanes. If we choose greed over responsible stewardship, the loosened silt will give way and (to quote Isaiah’s riff off of Genesis, “darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples” (Isaiah 60:2).
Those that fail to open themselves to the goodness of God’s creation will, like restless souls, forever walk to and fro and up and down. Without God to guide them, ultimately they, like Dante’s sinners, will be swallowed by a void of their own devising.