Finding a Home, Finding an Identity

How does one describe being from New Orleans? Of the City's intrinsic beauty, its pride, its excitement, its devotion to a team and to a Faith? Can things such as this be quantified or measured? Can it be snuffed out, washed to sea, blown away? Can anyone defeat such a Joy in Life as well as in death, where death is no time for mourning but celebrating the Past? The answer is found in the embodiment of a team that isn't just a team, it's part of the intrinsic nature of New Orleans. The Saints are New Orleans. And New Orleans is the Saints. Summed up in so many words: WHO DAT!

And this is what is interesting above all about New Orleans: a paradoxical love and a faith that withstands every countenance of despair and attempt of shedding. It is found in a city that weaves in a faith not blind to life, but rather one lived inside of it. It is neighbor helping neighbor. It is the yearly Carnival celebrations beside one's fellow neighbor that, indeed, they've survived another hurricane season. It is celebrations of the Saints win or lose (but especially with the wins).

Places of childhood do not leave one's mind—not the good or the bad, not the ugly or the indifferent. So it is with me—yet the last thing New Orleans will leave you as is indifferent. Not even hurricanes, which wipe off many markers of the past, or man-made engineering disasters, which finish off where Mother Nature began her work, not even these disasters will tear from memory these mementos of days gone by. New Orleans is altogether different, another category altogether.

The place has a way of instilling both a pride of place and a sadness of when progress has been stopped, delayed, or hampered. It breeds la joie de vivre and disappointment. It is a city that is far from perfect, but it is one of distinctiveness that all who are associated with it take great pride in. It is an identity that no hurricane or distance can dissipate.

It is a city that has been, since its inception, a city to be documented, but not only documented but also lived. It is a city to live vicariously in, whether it is of the past, present, or the future. They are all contained within the ramparted streets of that unique leveed city. Once you are there, you never truly depart.

One always has a piece of the city whether you've been there a day, a year, or a lifetime. The only difference is that when you move away, you become an ambassador of that spirit of life shared. It speaks to the soul like no other place in world can. And sometimes, when the voices get to be too many, one cannot realize this until it is the only voice to remain from the sprawl and noise of another place, a place where all things are manufactured and not grown, a place where the façade is the only thing present.

Yet, one's ambassadorship remains, as though one is left in a second-rate hotel room waiting out the exile to return home. It is a strange love affair that New Orleans breeds. One that remains as thick as the humid air of that river city and remains despite all odds.

More now than ever does New Orleans and the Gulf Coast need its ambassadors. Love affairs do not end once the beloved is gone, they only grow stronger. And, in it, the bonds of those who traveled those hallowed streets, celebrated its unique joy, and lived in those homes now rebuilt but not forgotten can be remembered, renewed, and represented to others as a reminder of the ones who did not make it out of the surly floodwaters or the strong headwinds of the Gulf, of the ones who survived Katrina those five years ago this day if only as a memory to our hearts, to our Louisiana.



If any song will bring me back to Louisiana... if songs had the power to do such things... this one would be it. Louisiana will always be home to me with New Orleans as its heart, wrapped in a faith true.

God bless New Orleans, the state of Louisiana, and the whole Gulf Coast as we mark this fifth anniversary of the Storm that did not break the will of people of the Gulf Coast. It may have washed the shores of a challenged land, but its people will not waver. Its people will not retreat. Its people will prosper and rebuild and renew a place, a face of what is best about America. God bless Louisiana.

"Our Saints, Our City, Our Soul"

"Our Saints, Our City, Our Soul"
By Don LeCocq, Kenner, LA

Out of the fire
And up from the flood
A great team is born
Made of guts, steel and blood

Their history a low one
No one can deny
Their new rise a slow one
But oh now so high

This team that I speak of
Is of black and gold
And travels the gridiron
So brave and so bold

Their symbol is royalty
We call Fleur de lis
And proud New Orleanians
Watch it with glee

Come Deuce and come Reggie
Come Drew and come Joe
Come Marques and Terrance
Now go beat the foe

The course is set plainly
There is clearly a goal
Go show all the world
A storm can't kill our soul

To the men in black jerseys
The tights and the cleats
Know that we love you
In wins and defeats

And to you, Sean Payton
The coach of our dreams
Thank you from all of us
Who give jumps, yells and screams

You have given us purpose
You have given us hope
You have given us will
And a reason to cope

To all of the Saints
Who reside in the Dome
Thanks for making our city
A proud place to call home

[Source: WWL-TV.COM]


The game today was a slight disappointment, but the overall season was a blessing on so many levels. At the same time, it left me at looking to next year for the team, the city, and even myself and where I will be.

I've thrown four small parties for two regular season games and two playoff games, and what I've been so thankful for weren't so much the wins but the ability to use the game as a springboard to discussion well beyond the scope of the gridiron and football. It provided me and countless others from New Orleans an avenue of discussion on the matter of the city of New Orleans. It provided the citizens of the city itself a sense of hope for a return to some normalcy. The team this year provided what was needed most: compassion.

Not for the team, as was evident in its 14-39 shellacking today against the Bears, but for the city and its residents. The city wasn't swept under the rug of national consciousness, and I pray that because of this loss today that the city will not erased from the forefront of concern in this country.

Now that the games are over for the city's team, it's time for the nation to accept the city for what it is and what it needs: compassion.

The Propensity to Linger...and Other Things

While there is such a tiring strain caused by my drive to succeed this semester, it is truly amazing how the Lord presents a calming path before me. There is both struggle and success and yes, both can coexist in the same time and space, albeit almost in a miraculous manner.

I have been busy, of which I have no doubt about, but I have also had the propensity to linger these past few weeks. I have conferred with friends about this, and I have pinned it down to an excess amount of inertia. You may ask why in the world I am talking about inertia in these circumstances. Simply put: much to the chagrin of physicists everywhere the inertia I'm feeling is of the quantitative form. Being around this campus after these few years has almost forced me to linger wherever I go. It is a bit of remember history for me, at least personal history.

Just last week I was in Blocker in the evening trying to get some Stat homework completed, and I happened to overhear a big review in one of the classroom auditorium. It was one of my old calculus instructors, Amy Austin, giving one of her nearly-world-famous exam reviews the night before the first big common exam of the semester. The room must have had only 252 seats or so, but I guarantee you the room was packed to the rafters. People all over the place--from the side aisles to the very back of the room...that even stretched to a strategically-placed bench in either entranceway to the room. Simply put, it was packed. Needless to say, I stood in the far back, just listening to the review and the frantic shuffling of review materials of the students preparing for the next night's exam. Oh, the frantic memories.

It goes without saying, I feel blessed. Blessed to have gotten through calculus in some form or fashion, blessed to be getting through this semester thus far, blessed to have family here to visit with, and blessed to have friends to just hang out with.

The game last Monday night, with the Saints playing at home...in THE Dome...was magic. A few friends and I had a party, watched the game, and had some jambalaya that I had made. It was such a great reminder of home and of what I have found here. I can only hope to throw another party again this season. I can always use reminders of home, even if it means lingering in the past.

Hope for a New Year

I've read news I've been waiting to hear for four months now. Benson has said the Saints will return to New Orleans again next season. To practice at their Metairie facility and play games in Louisiana. Thank Heavens!

There's even talk of having the Superdome ready for mid-September 2006. So Christmas Miracles do happen, I suppose. There is always hope at the start of a new year. WWL-TV's Jim Henderson had it right when he described the Benson-New Orleans as a marriage of sorts in his December 30th Commentary:

And so it wasn't a divorce after all, just a separation these last four months between Tom Benson and the New Orleans fans.

In [sic] behalf of those fans, I would say this:
As in any separation we both probably said and did some things during it we regret.

[...]

You without us and us without you wouldn't ever be the same.

You have wants and needs. We have wants and needs.

We can only hope that these last four months have given both of us greater wisdom to recognize the difference.

God willing, New Orleans will return to the great city it was and become even better in the days and years to come. For Auld Lang Syne and the new days to come. Cheers to New Orleans and 2006. Happy New Year!