WLSU: New Orleans

My first visit to New Orleans was in May of 2007, about a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina. I was there to attend the wedding of a dear friend whose betrothed was a New Orleans native. For obvious reasons I kept my judgment to myself and got on the plane. Before even checking into my hotel, I met some friends – fellow wedding guests – at a nondescript restaurant with sidewalk seating. One member of our party had been at the casino all day – because of course there’s a casino in the middle of New Orleans – and by dinner time he was already knee-walking drunk. The rest of us, worked to keep him in line, and the waitstaff took the whole thing in stride. The food and service were incredible.

By chance, two other friends of mine from two totally different walks of life were in town that weekend for work, and we all ended up getting together. I was to find out that this is the kind of thing that just happens in New Orleans all the time. One of them had a connection at the world-famous Preservation Hall – a tiny front room concert venue that barely seats 100 on little rickety benches and sells out multiple shows a night, 360 nights a year. As someone with lots of opinions but no knowledge, I had never heard of it before, and now here I was stuffed into this piece of living history, back up against the side wall, sweat dripping, and body shaking with delight to the sounds of local trombonist Glen Andrews and his band the Lazy Six. I was so close that when Mr. Andrews extended his slide it almost bumped me in the nose. At one point, I sensed some movement on the wall behind me, out of the corner of my eye I saw a large cockroach skittering past me. It dropped to the ground underneath me and ran across the floor. My buddy’s cousin was playing banjo that night and stomping his foot to the rhythm. I saw the roach run toward him, I saw him look over, and I saw that foot come down and take care of business without ever losing the time. The crowd cheered and the magic rolled on.

The next day on a rooftop bar of a hotel that overlooked the Mississippi River, three of my friends and I sat together. Before this weekend none of them had ever met each other. Here we were. None of us were even staying at this hotel, but again somebody knew somebody. The sky was purple and brown and the air was muggy. We drank Abita beer and smoked locally rolled cigars. “Is this Heaven?” I asked. The wedding that evening was at the famed St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square. The couple was beautiful. I love them so much. The next morning, I headed back west, gob smacked and dizzy with joy.

Seven years later I returned to New Orleans. This time I was officiating the wedding. At the rehearsal dinner, the father of the bride found out I’d never had raw oysters. He told me tonight I’d be eating ten of them. So, I did. After the rehearsal dinner, I accompanied the wedding party down filthy funky Bourbon St. It was a Friday night, and I was in my clericals. Revelers and strippers threw beads at me and cheered the priest simply for being in their midst. What is this place and what am I doing here? As the gathering was winding down, I stopped by a nearby cigar shop and a group of guys from New Jersey celebrating their buddy’s birthday told me I was their priest now and I was coming with them. I became their sober religious mascot for the rest of the evening. I still talk with some of them on Facebook. That wedding was one of my all-time favorites. The couple were natives to New Orleans, and their love and affection for each other, for their families, for their friends, for their city just poured out of them.

The third time I went to New Orleans I had a steak so good I didn’t eat red meat again for a month. That is not hyperbole. It was the literal best meal I have ever had, and like visiting the grave of Jesus, I don’t like saying much about it because I don’t want to sully something so meaningful with my pitiful words.

New Orleans. It is both otherworldly and perfectly grounded. Magical and real. Gorgeous and grimy. Warm and scary. Joyous and dangerous. Poverty and wealth and theft and murder and marriage and joy and death and life and, dear God above, food and music and food and music!

For all I’ve said here, I don’t feel like I have a right to talk about New Orleans. It doesn’t belong to me. The people I’ve since met who are from there, maybe it doesn’t even belong to them so much as they belong to it. In some ways, my experience of New Orleans was not unlike my trip to the Holy Land of Palestine and Israel. Before I went, I had no experience and knew exactly what I thought. After going, I knew so much less and loved so much more. These places and these people – they don’t need my opinions and they don’t need me. There is so much life to be lived if I can love without judgment, if I can just go and see.

So I’m going to New Orleans around the time you’re reading this – during my sabbatical from work. I’m not going now as an act of pilgrimage, or to prove that I get it, or to be one with the people I once judged. I’m not even going because it’s my favorite place in the world. It’s not. I’m going because a theme of my sabbatical is the intersection of food and community, and the holiness that is found there. And when I thought of where food and community and sacred and mundane come together potently, New Orleans was the first place that popped into my mind.

And what about lasting forever? In Ecclesiastes, the Preacher Qoheleth says everything has the same fate. Everything has a time to live and a time to die. The Psalmist says we’re all dust, or even blades of grass, here today gone tomorrow. When Jesus visited Jerusalem, his disciples marveled at the magnificence of the Temple. He told them it would be gone, and less than 40 years later it was. He did not mean it as an insult or a slight. He was trying to get them to think differently about permanence, about eternity. The buildings and cities and even cultures we create – they all go away at some point. The love we nurture and share is everlasting. It outlives our bodies.

New Orleans won’t be there forever. Neither will Jerusalem. But then again neither will Cincinnati. Or Southern California. Or Wichita for that matter. Neither will any of us. Our time here is temporary. It’s all temporary. I believe in eternal life. But there are things we will lose when we die, things we can’t take with us – and not just the bad things. The point is not to make everything permanent. We cannot make anything permanent, but when we pay attention, we can spot the eternal things intertwined with the ephemeral: The point is to find the beauty and the love and the joy here and now. Qoheleth says, “There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil.” They know that in New Orleans.