Of Mardi Gras and Pelicans

 3/2

Pelicans and beads...

We meet on Ash Wednesday. But I want to talk about Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, so I ask my friends to imagine that I just wandered in from a long night of Mardi Gras partying. I'm wearing a 1940’s New Orleans Pelicans hat and utility shirt and Mardi Gras beads of purple, green and gold.

The current New Orleans basketball team is called the Pelicans.  But the original New Orleans team was called the Jazz and wore the Mardi Gras colors purple, gold and green. This made sense. Then they moved to Salt Lake City and became the Utah Jazz, which makes no sense. Then the Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans and became the New Orleans Hornets.  Until Charlotte wanted  the name back and  so New Orleans reached into  history and resurrected the Pelicans.

So why Pelicans?  The brown pelican is the state bird of Louisiana. Why? Early European explorers saw the strongly nurturing behavior of pelicans for their  young.  Medieval myth believed that the pelican would open its chest and feed its young with its own blood if there were no other food so the pelican became infused with Christian symbolism. So Catholic settlers of New Orleans held the bird as sacred and totemic for them. 

Today’s NBA Pelicans wear the red and blue of the old baseball team with some gold added.

Why purple, green and gold? Most legends have them connected to the first late 19th Century Rex parades and by tradition, purple stands for justice, green faith  and gold for power. But if you go deeper into the Catholic roots of Mardi Gras, the green is for the season of Epiphany just ending, the purple for the season of Lent just beginning and Gold for the Easter to which Lent leads.

When Louisiana State took the purple and gold for its colors, Tulane took the green. 

beads

And the beads? Primarily for giveaways tossed from floats by Carnival krewes in Mardi Gras parades.  And secondly for the traditional ribald escapades played out on Bourbon Street. My beads this year all bear peace signs, given the war in Ukraine.

But I also share three special  sets from my times in New Orleans. For the first five years after Katrina, I would spend one to two weeks a year working in the Central City neighborhood to help rebuild infrastructure  through a local ecumenical ministry. My special beads are from my hometown Pittsburgh Steelers, the famous Black Zulu krewe and the blue beads of the Presbyterian Homecoming Project which helped restore homes so that families could return from exile. At first, primarily in the Gentilly neighborhood.

New Orleans continues to live in my heart.

New Orleans 3: Juke joint theology

1/28

Dan and I have found our way to the Candlelight in the heart of Treme. Earlier today we visited the Backstreet Museum across the street from St. Augustine Parish and the memorial to the Unnamed Slave. The former Blandin’s Funeral Parlor has been turned into a repository for a breathtaking collection of Mardi Gras Indian costumes and finery from the Social and Pleasure Clubs Second Line parade units. Towards the end of our visit , the proprietor hands us a sheet with important information. 

Over the years of my visits here, I’ve pretty much learned which regular gigs take place  where every night of every week. But now a new door has opened. For the first time I know where the same groups play on which nights every week in the black neighborhoods. And so we have come to hear the Treme Brass Band. Earlier in the evening, we’d run into them ready to parade on Bourbon. We chatted with the tuba player and he was surprised when we told him we’d be heading to the Candelight later to hear them.  

From the outside, the Candlelight is a plain concrete block box.Looks like a roadside juke joint from an earlier time.  A tarp hung from the roof on one side covers a woman with her grilled meats and jambalaya stand. Inside rows of long tables and plastic chairs, a bar and the table with the free red beans and rice. A few players are sitting in the band area, waiting for the rest to arrive. 

As the show  begins, I begin to realize why Dan has been drawn  away from classic jazz to brass band. By now, classic jazz, ending with Be Bop, has become almost like an artifact,  under glass, something to be studied, or performed in a concert. Precise charts, well defined form. It’s a long way from the sweaty hot spots described in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to Jazz at Lincoln Center. Beautiful,and yet...

Brass band, on the other hand,  has its life in the streets, in the midst of community.  It has roots in the European brass band tradition, but made its music from what flowed out of the whorehouses, and churches. It has never left the streets, from the weekly second lines to funeral parades to these neighborhood gigs.  It listens, converses, picks up whatever’s going on, r&b, hip hop, funk and keeps adding it into the flow. Can move from Jesus to reefer to salvation and lovesick blues seamlessly. And keeps on flowing, like a river. 

So why am I writing about this?  Because I covet that for the church. Not the music, but the way of being, creating. Our mainline denominations have become like classic jazz, at their best, with some congregations presenting beautiful embodiments of a classic faith expression. But the vast majority simply echo the past with the same well worn charts. 

What we need is a church that is in the street, moving, flowing, interacting, leading the followers into dance and at the same time being reshaped by what they bring. A pulsating rhythm of life flowing through the streets and carrying the people who flow with it.

But there’s more. As I watch the room fill, the dance floor bounces with a crowd of black and white, rich and poor, all shapes and sizes, including people with various disabilities clearly a part of the community. This scene in the same place could be happening anytime over the last 100 years. 

The shameful reality is that when it comes to the integration of white folks and black folks at the most intimate levels, the jukes got there long before the church. These joints with their music born at the  crossroads of sacred and profane engaged in the transgressive act of bringing black and white together  to dance, to drink, to love the music to...everything the dominant society feared.  And we’re still trying to catch up.

I’m not saying that the church should become a juke joint. They are each their own reality. But there’s a lesson to be learned about an ethos, a way of being. That embraces and accepts life in all its reality and rawness. An uncompromising authenticity.  If the church can’t do that, it’s over. Or should be. If it can’t go there, its not worth it. Seems to me that’s what incarnational theology is all about. 

New Orleans 2: Questions from the Lower 9th

1/27

While taking Dan on a tour of the still devastated Lower 9th, we go visit the Make it Right Homes, Brad Pitts’ s commitment to build 150 homes. In addition to being built five feet above the ground, they’re all creatively green. It makes me wonder, would the Landmarks commission accept voltaic solar panels on the roof? Rainwater collectors to use in washing the steps and sidewalk? Could we install dual flush toilets? Use recycled   wood? In our process of rebuilding can we commit to green and make it work? Be an urban landmark rehab model?

These homes are inspiring. But make no mistake...the continued intentional emptiness of the lower 9th is criminal. It's clear who the powers do not want to come back. Ever.

My friend Matthew is Pastor of Berean Presbyterian Church, the first African-American Presbyterian church in New Orleans. As another small church pastor, we share many of the same struggles. Ironically, small churches can be emotionally more challenging than large ones. They can become ingrown, familial, proprietary and even isolationist, change resistant. I would love to bring our congregations closer, have them share  in our 100th anniversary, take a group from here  down there  to build and share time together. Make our mission life more real, more interconnected.

New Orleans 1: Four things I want for West-Park

1/26

After my first day in New Orleans  this year, I’ve decided what I want for West-Park:

• A “house” brass band
• An interior that looks like the House of Blues.
• Liturgical vestments made by MardiGras Indians.

And an annual All Saints/All Souls  day march round the block.