"Feel it, Girl! Feel it!"

So I am thinking that morning blogging is the routine for this trip, which has its benefits and its drawbacks. First, I am not missing quality kitchen time with Deborah, and I get morning coffee. However, with a little more time to process things on my own, it may be a little different than last time. At any rate, I am glad to have another opportunity to share with you what is happening in New Orleans AND to be doing it from a different coffee shop, one that has frappuccinos : ) and they actually taste good : )...okay..on with the important things.

Yesterday was a day where I continued to be blown away at the moments that people were willing to share with me, whether they are people here that I know or people that I have just met. I spent a lot of the day yesterday with Pastor Bruce, which was great because during my last trip I didn't see him much. We drove out by the lake to a nursing home to see a woman who is dying from full-blown AIDS. Anything I thought this experience would be like, it wasn't. I am not sure what I expected to see or feel, and it is again a dificult, but neccessary experience to share, so bear with me.

On the way over, Bruce shared with me that this woman is only in her 30s, has 2 kids (11 & 13), and has already lost a sister to AIDS just before the storm. She is part of a family that makes some poor decisions and, despite her love for Jesus, she cannot seem to escape the family pattern. She was brought to the nursing home a few months ago, because her HIV had advanced into AIDS when her family sold her medicine for money or drugs and then convinced her to go to a voodoo "healer." By the time she realized she wasn't healed, it was too late.

When we got to the nursing home, Pastor Bruce walked in the room and then went to use the restrooom before I came in and was introduced. So, I am standing in the hallway thinking that if it were me, I wouldn't want some stranger awkwardly staring at me in this state. So I stood for a minute before I heard a voice say "oh, come on in." A powerful invitation from a person in a desperate state. In inviting me into her room, she allowed me to share her space and her pain for quite a while. I walked in and introduced myself and it's hard to describe what I saw and felt in that moment. When AIDS is taking over, you lose everything very slowly. Most of her hair had fallen out, but she had enough left that you could see it used to be long and beautiful. Her arms were thin enough all the way to her shoulders that I could have encircled them with my thumb and finger and still had wiggle room. Her legs, constantly cramped and in pain, were bent up under the electric blanket she keeps on high to keep warm. Not only was she a physical mess, but she either lives in a state of constant pain or an odd sort of drug-induced "high."

We sat with her for a few minutes, Pastor Bruce encouraging her to eat, and her telling us about her kids. I asked her about her son's new football team and her face lit up to talk about him and her daughter. Pastor Bruce convinced her to eat some strawberry shortcake, and as she ate it lying down, the strawberry sauce dripped all over. I got some paper towel, and in another way that is hard to describe, she invited me into her space of pain, vulnerability, and inability, as she let me wipe it away for her. Now, I have heard that business in Matthew about "the least of these" for the entirety of my life, but now I think I get it. Not in a "look at me doing good things" way at all, but in a "how incredibly humbling to be invited as a stranger into that place with another human being" way. In feeling/thinking all of these things, I made my best attempt to still be present in that moment with her, but it was tough.

A few minutes later, her son and her father came in to visit for a while. Again, if I were a 13 year old boy dealing with what this kid is dealing with, both related to his mom and the rest of his family, I would not want some stranger sharing that space with me. But he came in and talked with us and his mom for a while before we left. All of this is terribly hard to explain, and all the words in the world probably wouldn't do it justice, but I was really grateful for it and though I'm not quite sure what to "do" with it yet, I appreciate it nonetheless.

After leaving, Bruce and I did some errands and he took me on another driving tour of different places in the city - more condemned projects that are being torn down and replaced with termite-friendly wooden buildings, the city mission and the streets that the homeless people have been pushed to so as not to make the folks at the Superdome downtown feel uncomfortable, and he told me more than I ever knew about how and where to get drugs at the corner stores in the city, including the one just down the street from my other coffee spot. As we drove, he also invited me into his space as he shared part of his own story with me. Gang-banger gone Jesus-lover, he told me about growing up and people he had loved and lost and about the committment that drives him to do what he does each day. This story, similar to Deborah's last time, I feel compelled to hold carefully and to myself, but I am grateful for his sharing of it with me.

After he dropped me back off at "home" I went to the store with Deborah. A side note - I have found the grocery store to be a type of "racial eden" here in New Orleans. Everybody gotta eat so any time we go to Rouse's, there's white people and black people and hispanic people and kids and old folks and rich folks and poor folks and it's great. While it is not asking anyone to interact or build groundbreaking relationship bridges, it is still nice to see, especially from eyes that are incredibly conscious of racial issues.

When we got back to the house, Deborah and I began quite the cooking charade. As I said in previous blogs, one of my favorite things is to cook with others while I am here. We have good conversations, are less formal with each other, and there's just something that's right about cooking together. One of the things we were making was salmon and she had me prepare the marinade, which as most of you know, is a feat. If it isn't ketchup or hotsauce, I don't have a clue. So, I am pouring mustard and then some honey into the pan and she is handing me all of these spices while I'm thinking, "Deborah, do you know I have no clue?" And this is the exchange that took place..
-I dash once or twice "Is that good?"
-"No, maybe a little more"
-"Okay..how bout that?"
-"Feel it, girl. Feel it"
-"You mean like, touch it?"
-Deborah laughing at my ridiculousness, I am no Rachel Ray.

Ha. All of this to say that though my mouth appreciates cajun cooking, my skills have a bit to be desired still. We had a good laugh as she tried to explain how I could "feel" cooking and then carried on to make the dish below:


I picked that quote for my title today partly because it is funny and classic "kristen in the kitchen" but also because it seems to really capture my New Orleans time. While I am here to learn and hopefully help a few people while I am at it, I think a lot of the value is in learning to just "feel it." Mike and I talk sometimes about "bearing witness" and just being with people in those moments - such as being with a woman dying from AIDS - and I think being able to "feel it" is the first part in being able to do anything "social work-ish" to work to heal that with them. Part of my drive with Pastor Bruce yesterday was spent having the same thoughts. We talked some about how even though it is uncomfortable and sad to drive by the homeless people downtown, it is necessary because we so often refuse to "feel it" and are more apt to pretend like it just isn't there or isn't our problem to worry about. And I think sometimes when you share these things, whether it's with an individual or a community, it might meet their needs more than we realize.

After our "feel it" cooking time, Deborah and I left it all for later and headed to Bible study, which is more a teaching/preaching time, than what some of you might think of as traditional Bible study. While I am usually not one for taking pictures during church, I took one last night just as another way to "share" this experience with you. This is Pastor Bruce, preaching about loving equally and about being committed to Jesus, which was particularly meaningful after our talk earlier in the day about his own committment to service.


After church, we headed back for a very late dinner, but it was delicious! and called it a day. Again, another very long blog entry, but I hope reading it was worth it for you. Thank you, as always, for being a part of this with me.