A SONG FOR CLIFF

Fly like a dove and leave your fears behind (2x)
Soar 'round the world with open eyes and wings
To realize what you share
To realize what you hope
To realize what you fight,
To realize what you love

Open your wings and feel the rush of air (2x)
Reach out and follow your dreams so free
To live life anew
To live life for laughs
To live life for dreams
To live life for love

You can't keep looking at the past
Look toward the rising sun
Tomorrow brings a new day,
Take it and fly away.

~Caitlin Moss and Nancy Hartman

YOUR HIGH CLIFF: A Prayer for the Passing of Pastor Cliff Nunn

This morning I awoke to the saddest of news by email. Leroy Harbauer, the construction site manager for First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans, emailed to tell of the untimely passing of Pastor Cliff Nunn this past weekend.

Cliff has served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church New Orleans for the past twelve years. I could think of no better pastor than he to serve through the hell of Katrina and yet find the footing to be a pastor, an advocate, a visionary and organizer.

I’ve known Cliff since I was three or four and my father was the Associate Pastor at University Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge. During that time, Cliff experienced a call to ministry mid-life and from that point on used his fullest gifts as a conduit to places of need in South Louisiana.

This past summer, I became reacquainted with Cliff and his lovely wife Nieta during a mission trip to help rebuild local homes in the Broadmoor area. While there, our theme for the week was “What a Wonderful World”. We drew on the words from Psalm 31:21 of the The Message translation:

21Blessed GOD!
God's love is the wonder of the world.

As we unpacked the whole of the Psalm through the course of the week, I found myself thinking of Cliff from the opening words of the Psalm (excerpts from verses 1 through 5)

I run to you, GOD; I run for dear life.
Don't let me down!
Your granite cave is a hiding place,
Your high cliff aerie a place of safety.
You're my cave to hide in,
my cliff to climb.
Be my safe leader, be my true mountain guide.
free me from hidden traps; I want to hide in you.
I've put my life in your hands.

There is no worse way to exegete scripture than to cling to particular words. But in this situation, I smiled at the providence of reading ‘Cliff’ into this Psalm, “your high cliff is a place of safety.” Truly Cliff and Nieta and their ministry in the Broadmoor neighborhood and greater New Orleans has provided a place of safety and sanctuary for countless people. His visionary style can feel like a scary precipice for those faced with day to day details. But for those who need hope, encouragement, perseverance and peace in the midst of life’s worst storms, Cliff was a safe leader, a mountain guide. I can think of no other pastor who modeled what it meant to ‘put my life in your hands’ than Cliff did.

When budget came up short for rebuilding, Cliff prayed. When tools disappeared from the shed, Cliff prayed (and called a local reporter for front page coverage). When the church struggled with the constant change and transition post-Katrina, Cliff prayed. Always, these prayers were answered with funds, with faith, and with good fun humor. After the newspaper ran the tool need, the next day it was ‘raining tools’ as local citizens brought all they had to the tool shed to gain their maximum possible use.

When I first spoke to Cliff after Katrina, I asked him how his pastoral duties had changed. He said, “Now I am a community organizer, a construction site manager, a volunteer coordinator, and an advocate for the voiceless. I realize now that should have been my job description as a pastor all along.”

As a pastor myself, I will remember his redirection in pastoral leadership as a challenge and a charge.

The Psalm ends with wonderful words of encouragement:

23Love GOD, all you saints;
GOD takes care of all who stay close to him,
But he pays back in fullthose arrogant enough to go it alone.
24Be brave. Be strong. Don't give up.
Expect GOD to get here soon.

Cliff was never arrogant enough to go it alone; his call was to organize the community into something greater than their own woes or needs. In New Orleans, home of the Saints football team, Cliff Nunn stayed close to God and in so doing was a saint for the city. My prayer for those who grieve his loss as a pastor, friend, family member, place of safe sanctuary will be those words from verse 24: “Be brave. Be strong. Don’t give up. Expect God to get here soon.”

DON'T GIVE UP: Writing of Fourth and Fifth Grade Youth from a New Orleans Charter School

The Cajun Potato Dance is a two-step held together by a potato. A couple joins hands and then seeks to hold up a potato between their foreheads while dancing. The phrase that accompanies this dance, "Lache pas la potate", literally means "Don't let the potato drop." But in Cajun slang, the words intone "Don't give up."

During our writing workshop we had fourth and fifth graders share moments they had to not give up. These were shared with fourth graders in the Wilmington Area Elementary School and pen pals developed between two classrooms where students continued to encourage each other, "Don't give up." Below are a few excerpts from their writing:

RIDING MY BIKE: By Troyale

It was really hard to learn to ride a bike. I tried to learn how to ride a bike a long time ago. It was a small pink and white bike with training wheels. It said ‘Glamour Doll’ and it had my name on it.
I almost got it. I was falling. I also got a new bike that’s bigger. I was riding but then I fell. I am almost there. My mom is a great supporter. Now I have both training wheels off. Oh no!
I got it. I am riding! I can’t believe it. No training wheels. I’m so scared but I am doing it. “Yes,” I said to myself. I am proud.

MULTIPLICATION: By Le'Jon


In second grade, I was learning my multiplication facts. I didn’t really catch on too fast. It was very hard for me to remember them. The easiest ones for me to remember were the ones and two families. The hardest ones to remember were the seven and eight families.

I improved with help from my teacher and parents. My teacher helped me by giving me flash cards to study. I asked my mommy and my daddy to drill me every day. Every day my teacher gave us a multiplication drill. I got better and better.

I am in fifth grade now and they don’t intimidate me anymore. I can do them in less than three minutes. My teacher uses drills all the time. I can do it easily. Multiplication will never scare me again.

THE LEAP TEST: By Tariona

I worked hard to get to fifth grade. I was studying hard to pass the LEAP test because if I did not pass my mom would be mad at me. I would not be able to go to the skating rink, the movies, the blue bayou, or Six Flags. I passed and I am happy.

My teacher gave me LEAP samples to practice with. It was hard at first, but now I get it. I get it because my mom told me to study day and night. I was almost up until 1:00 a.m., but then my mom got up and told me to go to sleep.

At first I failed it. Then I studied harder to pass the test, so I achieved my goal. It was hard to get to the fifth grade, but I kept trying and now I am there. I think I did a great job!

MOVIES AND MONEY: By Lauren Meyer

If Katrina had been a movie, everyone would have paid to see. And let’s face it, today, movies aren’t cheap. First is the cost of actually making the movie: the set, the props, the special effects, and the list goes on. Then you have the cost of the cast and crew. From start to finish, millions of dollars are spent on just the production of a movie, making it ready for the big debut. Once the movie is out in theaters, the box office can bring in millions to billions of dollars.

Think about going on a date to the movies. You have the cost of tickets, popcorn, drinks, and maybe the extra treat for your sweetie. This one evening can deprive your wallet of $20 very easily. Finally, you have the people who wait for the movie to come out on video. Whether you purchase or rent the movie, you are still putting money into the already overflowing “movie piggy bank.” How many people are so carelessly willing to give $10 for two hours of entertainment? A lot.

But how many people are willing to give $10, or even $5, to support a good cause? Not as many. Can you even imagine what could be done if we, as an entire society, could be able and willing to spend our money on something that could make a difference? Don’t get me wrong, I love movies. Movies are great. But our priorities seem just a little “out of whack.” Many people would spend their money to see a movie about Katrina, but most are not willing to spend their money to help these victims who they observe.

After Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans was devastated, emotionally and physically. A lot of people reached out to help, but a lot of people continued about their lives, having fun, and watching movies.

WAKE-UP CALL: By Nicole Crumbacher

I am an active participant in my church’s youth group. Every summer the youth group is given a remarkable opportunity to go on a mission trip. I have gone on every mission trip possible throughout my high school career. I believe that just by participating in these rewarding adventures, everyone’s outlook on life involved in the mission will be changed for the better. It was on last summer’s mission trip to New Orleans that really changed my life forever.

My mission trip group would agree that waking up at six o’clock in the morning to prepare for the Sunday morning service after a whole day of traveling to New Orleans was just a little bit stressful. Let me tell you, sixty people waiting in line for four showers, and twenty-five girls in one bathroom wasn’t a very pretty sight. Even though the morning was filled with fighting for showers, getting ready, preparing music, and thinking of last minute things we needed for the service, it all turned out absolutely perfect. I didn’t know that by walking through those stain-glassed sanctuary doors my life would be changed forever!

The church in which we preached used to have approximately two hundred members, but since Katrina, only thirty-five members returned. During the service, as we were singing “Day’s of Elijah”, I looked out into the thirty-five member crowd to find them all with big, bright smiles. However, one person stood out to me. This tiny lady with a smile that lit up the room was looking at all of us as if we were the delight of her day. Later, I learned that she went through a great deal of hardship in the past two years because of Katrina. What stuck out to me even more than her inviting smile was her story. You would never know by looking at her, but this sweet eighty- year old lady along with thousands of other people went through more devastation in four days because of Katrina than most people do in a lifetime. These people literally lost all of their possessions and still have faith in God. That in itself is a miracle.

The lady’s story is as follows: As her house was filling up with water from the flood and all of her belongings were being destroyed, she climbed upstairs into her attic. Miraculously, she then broke through her roof from her attic! Little did she know, this would be just the beginning of her struggles. For two days, this eighty-year old lady sat on her roof awaiting rescue. It’s truly a miracle that she broke through her attic ceiling by herself, let alone staying on her roof for two whole days!

I truly see God shining through this lady. Her courage and strength were so strong that she could live to tell her story. I went down to New Orleans in order to help people but this lady along with other Katrina victims ended up helping me even more. They showed me that courage, determination, and faith in God, along with a bright smile can conquer any challenge in life.

IRIANCE: By Carolyn Moss

Iriance’s eyes opened wide with awe and amazement, “You went to the 9th ward. Did you go to the east side?” She asked in wonder. I didn’t know if the lower 9th ward was considered the east side but I assured her that I went across the canal to the eastside but I had to cross the St. Charles bridge since the Claibourne/Robertson bridge was closed.

The 9th ward is a war zone in varying degrees of annihilation adjoining small touches of rebuilding. The emptiness of the lower 9th by the Industrial canal levee now that the debris is removed overwhelms. It is a barren land. Brad Pitt’s pink houses briefly adorned the landscape but provided an almost garish contrast to the bleak surroundings.

This wasteland is home to Iriance, a fourth grader at Andrew Wilson Charter School. It is what she knows and desperately cares about. In one breath she cannot talk about it without mention of killing and robbing and helicopters coming to retrieve people who have been shot. But, in the next breath it is home, that complex, emotional concept which somehow connects people and land and life.

Somehow I struggle as I compare her wasteland home to the excesses of Bourbon Street in the wonderfully European, slightly shabby chic French Quarter. On the same day, hours apart, only several miles away, but a lifetime separated. Beautiful and yet like a showy peacock strutting next to a peahen. Both important and vital to the survival of the species. But in this case the peahen has been horribly roughed up. Never was she showy, but always was she vital, producing the life, supportive background of the city – not rich, not wealthy but present, ever informing, ever shaping and reshaping the city whether it wanted it or not.

BEADS TO REMEMBER: By Jessica Shelenberger

My great aunt Dot-Dot was predictable. Upon every visit to her home state of Ohio, she’d cook up spicy red beans and rice and complain about the effects of her city’s humidity on her thin and wiry hair. And every year, just after the beginning of Lent, she’d wrap a Hush Puppies shoebox with thick brown shipping paper and send it to my sister and me.

“Lizzy! Jess! You’ve got a package!” Mom yelled. It was late February. I was nine and Lizzy was five. I grabbed the box before Lizzy, my fingers sticking to the ribbons of tape that had mummified the shipping paper.

I read the return address, scrawled in angular letters on the left corner of the box: “Metairie, Louisiana 70003.” My fingers traced over the letters of the unfamiliar city’s name. I tried to form them into a pronounceable word. Though it was an American town—our Aunt Dot-Dot’s town—it felt exotic and foreign.

I grabbed the scissors from the junk drawer and cut jagged lines through the glistening tape and rough paper. The box swished and rattled, sounding like an unopened box of macaroni and cheese.

We ripped the final shreds of packaging away from the box together. With our last tug, a waterfall of plastic Mardi Gras beads drenched our laps, rivulets of emerald and gold and amethyst pouring across our legs and socks and onto the linoleum floor. They scattered around us, plinking like marbles on glass.

Lizzy and I shrieked with delight. We layered the jewels around our necks and twisted them around and around our pale wrists. Lizzy roped two strands around her waist and wiggled, the plastic clanking like a can of coins. We bartered with one another for the booty adorned with fleur-de-lis charms. We paraded through the house, waving and flashing princess smiles.

Aunt Dot-Dot’s gift had only cost her a trip to the parades and some postage. But those beads made us rich. In the months to come, Lizzy and I would drag the beads outside to adorn our bikes and cats, we’d plop them into the bathtub to swish them in the bubbles, and we’d carefully coordinate them with our Barbies’ outfits. We were dazzled by this gift from the foreign city called New Orleans.

For years, my understanding of this Gulf Coast city was shaped by those boxes of beads. Any time I heard “New Orleans,” images of Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras entered my mind. Amid the backdrop of wrought iron balconies and arched doorframes on historic brick buildings, I would picture revelers in costumes on parade floats, college coeds bearing it all, and drunken bystanders raising enthusiastic fists. Every imagined character was smothered in sparkling plastic necklaces. 'When the Saints Go Marching In' was the soundtrack to my images of the Big Easy, those splatting trombones and trilling clarinets forcing me to keep time with my foot. Oh Lord, I want to be in that number, I’d think, enticed by the celebration found in my daydreams.

For years, New Orleans essentially remained a foreign place to me, though I may have picked up a few more facts about the city after receiving my first box of Mardi Gras beads. Yet I wasn’t alone. Didn’t we all know so little about New Orleans the morning of August 29, 2005?

As the violent winds and dark waters of Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, causing major levy breaches and unimaginable flooding and devastation, we were glued to our television screens. We suddenly couldn’t get enough information about the Crescent City. Even after learning that Great Aunt Dot-Dot was safe, my thumb was sore and my eyes burned because of constant flipping between 24-hour news channels. While watching the horrific images, my stomach gurgled. I had a persistent case of heartburn. I couldn’t tell if my malaise was related to my pregnancy or if it was a physical manifestation of the loss I was witnessing on my twenty-eight-inch Zenith.

Our fascination with the City that Care Forgot continued after the flood waters receded, as those fetid waters uncovered more disastes. Engineering failures. Racism. Slow and insufficient disaster assistance responses. Poverty. Corrupt local governments. Crime. A greedy insurance industry. Poor educational systems. Environmental catastrophes. Our fascination with New Orleans was apparent. The flood waters mirrored the problems facing our nation. As we became acquainted with New Orleans through our TV screens, radio reports and printed reports, we got to know ourselves a bit more.

Three years later, the rebuilding in New Orleans continues. I am sure that many of the people who were once transfixed by the images of the city no longer pay any heed. Only occasionally will I hear a news story about New Orleans, mostly about celebrities’ efforts to help in rebuilding. It would be easy to forget this city and its residents, displaced, resettled and still mired in the problems left behind.

My husband, sixteen-month-old son, and I went shopping last weekend, hunting the best after-holiday sales. Hanging on a large display just inside the entrance to one department store were enough plastic beads to fill dozens of boxes from Aunt Dot-Dot. A group of teenage girls grab at them, letting the strands glide through their fingers, just as Lizzy and I had years ago. A few steps away, the store sells bright fuchsia bikinis with a fleur-de-lis strategically placed on each side of the top. Wheeling my red shopping cart past them, I imagine those bronzed girls prancing about in the bikinis with the beads tickling their shoulders and chests and bellies. Heads thrown back in delight, the girls laugh at their revelry.

My day dream is short-lived as the images of a defeated and drowning New Orleans gush into my imagination: swollen bodies swirling in the flood waters; filthy, thirsty babies wailing in anguish; a father desperately appealing to the viewing audience for information about his children. The images spill over me. A puddle of loss lies at my feet. I swallow hard.

My son tugs my arm from his seat in the shopping cart. He grunts and points toward the display of beads. After discovering a pile of plastic necklaces in my old toy box at my parents, he’s been enamored with the clatter the jewels make when hung around his neck. I want to gather up the necklaces and shower them upon my son, but I can’t bring myself to do it. He is not yet old enough to bear their weight.

I KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO MISS NEW ORLEANS: By Tim Cuff

Following the failure of New Orleans’s levee walls and the flooding of the city after Hurricane Katrina, many Americans, as they watched video of evacuations of the city, heard, many for the first time, the song, “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans.” It is a song first made famous by Louis Armstrong. For some reason, although I am not “from” there, I do miss New Orleans. As they like to say, I have people there. My mother was born in New Orleans in 1926. My grandfather and my uncles, for much of their working lives, were employed by the Sewerage and Water Board (the government office responsible for maintaining the levees and the pumping stations which kept New Orleans from flooding). My grandmother lived there until the post-Katrina flooding “exiled” her to Dallas, Texas. I first visited in 1966 and have been a visitor many times.

As I write this your “mission trip” has not yet started. Some of you have been to New Orleans before and have a connection with that place. I am particularly writing this for folks who have never been there so that as you travel you will know of someone who, although not “from” there, is “of” New Orleans. With some of my people there, the tragedy, which was the flooding after Katrina, takes on a different feel. My grandmother’s house, a place in which I had slept, a place to which I brought my college friends, and a place in which my children experienced the unique love of their great-grandmother, was flooded nearly to its roof. Last December (2006), my brothers and sisters returned to New Orleans to help bury my grandmother, who died in Dallas a few months earlier. We visited her old house. Out front sat a FEMA trailer. The house was “see-through.” All the interior walls had been ripped out. Inside the outer walls, only the studs remained. We looked in the windows and out the back of the house. Trees that had shaded my daughters, Laura and Margaret, while they played in the yard were gone. The street was empty. More than a year after the flooding, chain saws still whirred and their clatter was the most noticeable sound in the neighborhood. When we buried my grandmother, the service was at St. Dominic’s, just a few blocks from the flooded house. It was the church my grandparents had attended for decades. We sat in folding chairs. There were no pews. They were lost in the flooding and there was a ring of water stain 7 feet high around the entire church, including on the huge brass doors through which we entered.

During that trip, we also visited the pumping station where my grandfather had worked. My grandfather was a supervisor for the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. He and my grandmother lived in a house owned by the Board and adjacent to a pumping station on the Orleans Street Canal (although that house was demolished several years before Katrina and the flood). It was startling to see the building that housed those giant pumps, pumps that took water out of the city, and sent it “safely” into Lake Pontchartrain. When the levees broke, the pumps were useless. The machines my grandfather tended so many years before (he died in the early 1970s) could not protect anything then. We walked along the levee and thought about the levees that couldn’t stand the pressure. We looked at the railroad track that ran along the back of the property on which my grandfather’s house sat. [Ever try to sleep in a house less than 50 feet from an operating train?] The railroad track was elevated several feet above the top of the levee…..The railroad was built to operate even if the levees failed. The houses of most residents of New Orleans were not.

As you head to New Orleans, please know that I will be with you. For whatever reason, and I must admit that I don’t really know why: maybe because my mother (who died when I was eleven) was born there; maybe because I celebrated my twelfth birthday there with fifty pounds of boiled shrimp and crayfish; maybe because my grandparents, aunts, and uncles still live there; maybe because I took my wife and children there to see where my mother grew up and to visit their great grandmother; regardless, I miss New Orleans. If you’ve not been there before, I hope you can understand the place. It is not just Bourbon Street, the fancy downtown hotels, and beautiful southern mansions. It is a port town. Grain from the Midwest flows out, manufactured goods from around the world flow in. It is also an industrial city. It is full of some rough men, some rough women. For many, life there has always been difficult, not just since Katrina. Racial tensions still exist. Poverty is not uncommon.

If time permits, visit my grandmother’s old house. It is nothing special. It was just an old woman’s home. But if you want some personal connection with New Orleans, visit the house. It is at 5844 Argonne Blvd in the Lakeview neighborhood (about 5 blocks east of Canal Blvd, just west of City Park and the Orleans Canal, just north of I-610). Visit the pumping station where my grandfather used to tend operations (same neighborhood, two more blocks east of Argonne, and just south of I-610, you’ll need to get onto Orleans Avenue ). Think about how the pumps kept the city safe until the levees broke. Look at my grandmother’s old house and the other houses around it. Look how high the water in the canal is above the land and the houses around it. Look at the train tracks just behind the pumping station. Look where the tracks are in relation to the water in the canal. Imagine what it would have been like on August 29, 2005 to see the waters rising to the roof when the water from the canals broke loose. Imagine and pray.

It might be hard to imagine. It might be hard to believe that anyone would want to live here, living “under the water.” But remember my grandmother. Flooded out of New Orleans at age 98, she was taken to a beautiful place in Dallas, Texas. On her death bed, nearly a year later, she asked to go back home, back home to New Orleans. I don’t understand it fully. But I don’t understand a lot. I don’t understand the town’s motto. You know it: laissez les bons temps rouler (let the good times roll). I think that when you live in a city that is below sea level, a city always one storm away from disaster, it affects your thinking. You may be rich, you may be poor; you may be white, you may be black, you may be Cajun; but always being just one big storm away from disaster reminds you of the fragility and the precious nature of life. It reminds you that life is short, it reminds you to celebrate your existence, it reminds you to dance with the ones God gave you, laissez les bons temps rouler. As you head to New Orleans, please know that I will be with you. As you work there, remember to dance with the ones God gave you, laissez les bons temps rouler. I miss New Orleans….and in three weeks so will you.

HELP: By Zach Moss

Help Help Help
We Still Need Help
When I walk down the street
Not seeing anything or treats
Without lights in the houses
The work still awaits
Come people come
Help build a home
People's roofs need fixed
Bring them back home
Alone at night
Without a neighbor around or in sight
Please help the people
Make people come back
All that they know
Let them come
Help me Help them
New Orleans needs help.

Western Pennsylvania Table Project

I continue to be inspired by Jim Moose and his passion for the Western Pennsylvania Table Project. Just as amazing is hearing how the story keeps unfolding and people's gifts are connecting to make something amazing happen. Read the link below for the latest.

http://www.ncnewsmedia.com/archive/tim_galleries/SPECIAL_PROJECTS_08/MAY/Table_Project/story1.htm