Photo on left, Gina and Rev. Susan at Ariana's Grand, a catering business that is a staging area for donations, hot meals and volunteers going door to door to help residents devastated by Sandy
This tent in the photo to the right was just put up when I visited and delivered some of your donations. Ariana's at 192 Ebbitts St. is using its own resources to put up a tent for the donations received and then is converting the building into an area that can feed and warm many families in the Staten Island area.
For almost three weeks, I have been coordinating donations to a site on the South Shore. Working with Gina in this photo, both of us were happy to finally meet in person. She showed me around the site where so many of your donations have gone. They were all so excited because the tent was just going up and people moved quickly to get the donations organized and sorted under the tent which was being enclosed to protect them from the elements. She showed me a solar oven that they hope to get going. I remembered the Philly Cheese Steak truck that I sent there earlier in the week. Now I could picture what people had been telling me about all this time.
One of the neighbors told me his family's story, how his family was weathering the storm; how he and his child videotaped the storm--at first out of curiosity until they turned around and saw the water surging. There are hundreds of these stories. People will tell you about seeing the water rise so many feet, fearing for their lives. Even if they evacuated, they came back to see the water mark so many feet above the door. It reminds me so much of stories I heard after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in Mississippi. People tell these stories because they need to remind themselves what is real and how people helped them get on more solid ground with a flashlight, offering some cough syrup for a child sick from the mold that a woman told Gina you can scrape from the walls and it grows right back. People eagerly taking the diapers and wipes and how much folks need the glucose test strips or nebulizers.
We got donations of organic apples. I want so much to make apple crisps and apple pies for these people--something that will warm their stomachs, something that will taste good and let them know how much we love them. How much we love one another! Every single day since Sandy unleashed her fury, I see the gifts of love and support. It came last night when I read the hand written letters from a Unitarian Universalist congregation that told us how they blessed the letters and the hand made bracelets for the children last Sunday, how they are so glad we are in there helping our neighbors, and how they are keeping us in their thoughts, hearts and prayers.
Tomorrow, the Unitarian Church of Staten Island will hold its 160th Anniversary Dinner. I will share some of these letters with our members and friends. We will sing and eat and enjoy this wonderful anniversary but we will also have our hearts filled with images of our neighbors on the South Shore who happen to live where the waters raged and the houses flooded (including 4 of our members and friends from what I can tell) and where mothers and sons' hands were separated and the little ones lost, where tankers drifted on dry land and boats smashed cars and people died in their basements. Life and death are always intermingled. Sorrow and joy, Kalil Gibran, told us decades ago, are part of one another. Here on this Island, I realize how interconnected we all are. I am so grateful for the many gifts you are sharing with us on Staten Island--gifts of time, volunteering and whatever you have to give. I am grateful for the CERG-UUA relief fund that will help so many congregations and so many devastated communities in this area.
I am so grateful this Thanksgiving for this church that has opened its doors to help relieve some of the suffering and who are so patient with me and who are opening their homes, volunteering in the Shelters and just checking on others. I am grateful for the people from Staten Island Recovers and Guyon Rescue and volunteer nurses and doctors from Mt. Sinai who help get the donations of bunk beds, the 53 ft. tractor trailer, the non allergenic formula and food where it needs to go and who visit the sick going door to door.
I am not sure Thanksgiving ever meant so much to me before. I am grateful to my colleagues, The Rev. Lynnette Delbridge, Father Liam and Father Charles Howell who took donations and helped find a safe place for them on Staten Island. I am grateful for our partners and friends, El Centro del Inmigrante and Make the Road New York. And I am most grateful to the Revs. Jef Gamblee and Craig Hirshberg who helped us here at the church when it was most chaotic; who took my cell phone to give me some respite and took messages and urged me to take care of myself. I am thankful for the Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt and the good people at Fourth Universalist who donated and came over immediately after we opened up as a site for relief efforts and the Rev. Lissa Gundlach and all the members of All Souls who also came over those first days and who keep coming back to Staten Island to help with volunteer efforts even now. And our congregation in Brooklyn who also helped with donations. And to President Obama who came to this borough and gave us hope and his sincere attention and promised his Administration would stay with us for the long haul--his visit yesterday buoyed so many struggling people, so many volunteers and elected officials across party lines. That visit was the only time since I came here on Staten Island that I have seen the kind of unity, hope and dedications demonstrated so concretely for the good of all the people. I pray that somehow we can continue to work together in that spirit.
It is good to be connected. It is good to know you are not alone--that you are held in the caring arms of others, that you can see the face of God reflected in your neighbor who knows that pain and sorrow in one area causes a ripple of sorrow and pain everywhere. And likewise that love and kindness have that same kind of effect on us.
May you all feel and act on that sense of compassion, justice and unity that knows no bounds,
In gratitude and faith,
Susan
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