Friday, September 07, 2007

Email from the Hurricane Zone

An email arrived from Jack Warner, an American Jesuit priest who taught my high school philosophy class.  I remember him in his black shirt and clerical collar, leaning over the tall wooden teacher’s desk, where he smoked cigarettes and talked to us about the elements of ethics. That was thirty-five years ago, and I haven’t seen him since.  I do get mail, though – newsletters about teatro la fragua, the theater company he later started in the town of El Progreso, Honduras. In one newsletter Jack wrote that “the daily struggles of an impoverished people are played out on stage; teatro la fragua ... gives them a voice.” But in the morning’s email, all theater talk was set aside as they prepared for the arrival of Category 5 Hurricane Felix.

Fr. Jack wrote that there were no more flashlight batteries at the corner store, and the birds, lively earlier that morning, had grown silent. The color of the sky began to change. In El Progreso, people were hoping the mountains would blunt the storm.  They expected floods.

Katrina tutored many of us northerners on the nature of hurricanes, so as I read his email, I could imagine some of what he said.  I went online to see what the weather sites were predicting.  In a border region of Honduras, they thought all the wooden buildings of the villages would very likely be destroyed. In North America, friends emailed Jack to wish good luck to the actors we knew from the newsletters. Until the next email I could only imagine what was happening down there.  When we cannot speak or act, imagination by itself feels shallow and weak.

In the late afternoon, a second email arrived. Good luck had blown their way – the mountains absorbed much of the force, and Felix relaxed into a tropical storm with winds of only sixty miles per hour. Jack reported that rain filled the banks of the rivers there, even before the eye of the storm arrived. Certainly another day of heavy rain yet to come…

Scanning the web for news of El Progreso, I found a story about the previous hurricane, which struck further north, in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Hours after that storm passed, troops of Mayan villagers, armed with machetes and axes, began clearing their streets of debris.  This was faena, one villager reported, a custom of working a few hours a week for the community. It must have comforted them to step immediately into action.  Tradition served them well that day.*

Reading Jack’s emails and surfing the web disrupted my sense of luxury living here in Michiana.  Spurred by imagination, I felt hollow and challenged and ethically incomplete. It was as though that young priest was still calling upon me in class. “What are the elements of ethical behavior?  Mr. Smith, do you dare to give an answer?”

Yes, Father. Ethics is like a storm that knocks down the flimsy walls of our private life. Ethics has many necessary elements. You must see or hear what’s happening in the world and imagine it more deeply. You must find a tradition of public speech and make yourself a voice.  You must build a community of service and action. Ethics is faena, Fr. Jack.

(*Mark Stevenson, “Maya Indians in Dean’s path lost their real wealth: the trees,” Associated Press, 9/3/07)

Broadcast by Ken Smith on September 07, 2007
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