September 22, 2005
by Mary Frances Schjonberg

It might have seemed like a little thing but a lunch of gumbo in the midst of a gathering of Louisiana clergy last Friday culminated with the chef of Galatoire's of the French Quarter arriving to make café brulot. Especially for the New Orleans clergy contingent, the blend of strong coffee, orange zest, cloves, cinnamon, sugar and liqueur was a taste of home, a touch of the familiar in the strange land in which they now find themselves.

As Hurricane Katrina bore down on Louisiana on late in August, clergy in the Diocese of Louisiana faced the same decisions as everyone else in her path: whether to evacuate, where to go, what to take along. And now in the storm's aftermath they, along with their parishioners, worry about their homes, their families, and their jobs. They also worry about their parishioners and their parishes.

When 112 of the diocese's clergy, spouses and parish and diocesan staff members gathered at St. Margaret's Church in Baton Rouge on Friday, September 16, it was the first time most of them had seen each other since the storm hit.

Diocesan communications director Ann Ball said the diocese's clergy had been scattered all over the country by Katrina but some evacuated out of state managed to attend the meeting.

"They were all numb and shell-shocked by the events," said the Rev. Gerry Blackburn, a staff member of Episcopal Church's Office of the Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies.

Blackburn, Bishop Suffragan George Packard of the chaplaincies office, a number of clergy with experience in crisis counseling, and David Knowlton, a New Jersey psychologist with crisis-intervention training joined diocesan Bishop Charles Jenkins for the meeting they dubbed a "Day of Reflection and Preparation."

Blackburn and Ball said the experience that day was cathartic. Much of the talk that day was about parishioners being dispersed all over the country and clergy not knowing, in some case, where they'd gone to. Other clergy who had escaped Katrina's impact said they felt almost guilty.

"It's very difficult for them to know that their fellow brethren have experience such tragic losses," Ball said from the temporary diocesan offices at St. James Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge.

Knowlton said those clergy were especially concerned about how best to help those parishes that have been damage.

Knowlton compared his counseling of the Louisiana clergy to the work he did with clergy and others after the attacks of September 11. Then he worked with people experiencing what he called "witness grief." They were trying to deal with what they had seen and heard in person or in the media. The people at the clergy gathering Friday were victims of Katrina. Most, he said, were displaced and about half were homeless.

He normally begins his counseling sessions with a short, meditative video of still images and soft music to help establish a common basis for people who will be invited to share their experiences of the event. Knowlton said many of the images he used had been shown repeatedly on television.

He assumed that the clergy had seen them but was striving to slow down the impact of the images to let people reflect on them. What he did not anticipate is that most of the clergy present on Friday had, in fact, not seen much news coverage because they had been without televisions or even electricity.

The clergy had "very realistic" concerns such as how they would get paid, what would happen to their congregations if all their current and historical records were gone, how they might find their parishioners and whether enough would return to help rebuild.

Knowlton called their worries "very, very basic recovery issues," noting that some clergy were also dealing with having lost their homes and possessions. One person talked about what it means to lose of his baby pictures.

One of the best ways to deal with this kind of grief and these issues and worries, Knowlton said, is to "gather and talk about them."

Ball commended Bishop Jenkins for insisting that the clergy do just that. Jenkins led the way, she said. "He was so full of strength, so full of the Spirit, so full of wisdom and also so full of grief," she said. "He's not been afraid to shed tears and weep and meet grief."

The diocese plans to offer another opportunity in October for clergy to meet again.

Episcopal News Service