I wish you tidings from a nearly underwater, unelectrified Baton Rouge, LA where I, my wife and son are present and accounted for in something resembling a hexed Purgatory as we are forced to wait to make any type of plans; plans to have a funeral service for Danielle’s father who passed away early Monday morning, mere hours before hurricane Gustav roared across the shores of the state.

We left Nashville early Sunday evening and, ever since arriving in the wee hours on Monday, have been living in the aftermath and vast uncertainty of a post-hurricane crippled metropolitan city. Knowingly, we drove into the gut of impending turmoil and it gave us no joy.

This is my second major hurricane to experience as a former resident of Louisiana, the first being Katrina three years ago (we all know what that did), and now this menace. Ironically, even while growing up in this city, I never experienced, let alone watched, a hurricane as destructive as these two have proven themselves to be. Gustav, from what I can tell, has done far worse damage to our hometown than Katrina ever bothered. My parents, who lost power at noon on Monday in the adolescent stages of the blow, will likely be without electricity for another 5-7 days as of this writing. The city, this time very well governmentally led unlike the experience with Katrina, continues to plead for patience and dignity from her citizens, most of whom still have no electricity, some have no running water, thousands who now have trees in their living rooms, and all will in some way or another be forever affected by this storm. Katrina will be a name long-forgotten by the time this is all over. Gustav will not.

In the meantime, my father-in-law’s cancer-beaten, shrunken body – God forever rest his large soul – lies in a hospital morgue with no earth to take him and no scheduled memorial service to honor him, since the absence of adequate electricity, shortage of fuel and groceries, loss of phone lines, and a city-wide curfew from 8pm-6am each day thus far has derailed any human plans to move on with not only the funeral, but lives themselves. We are thankful that Danielle’s dad was spared the ignominity of having to struggle to breathe each and every last breath while the bastard storm outside his hospital window blew freakishly strong 100+ mph winds, itself having no shortage of breath. To have avoided that set of circumstances, we find ourselves grateful.

Danielle and I long for the comfy reaches inside our very nearly completely repainted cottage in Nashville where the sun is no doubt shining on the black walnut tree towering above our intact, seamless, and dry roof. Until then, we remain in south Louisiana in a state of flux, uncertain of much of anything as far as human plans go, and pregnant with pause as the rivers recede, power is restored, as felled trees are sawn away, and a semblance of normality slowly returns to this culturally fertile area. In the middle of loss hope is recovered. In the middle of a storm, the I Am of everyday prepares the way for those who trust not only in him, but in his inexplicable ways and in the direction that, on the surface at least, seemingly has no earthly or heavenly direction whatsoever. We hope for what is lost in the buried and in the living, in the dry and in the drenched, in the comfort and in the misery. Passing the shores of chaotic upheaval, we float the river of peace aching for what or who is lost, praying that what is found in its place is a peace that transcends all the hoopla, the in-limbo, the flux and the unrelenting winds. Pray this be true in all grandeur.