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Vodoo Helping to Heal New Orleans
Today's guest blogger is Erik Schwarz, founder of Interfaith Works, a nonprofit based in New Orleans, Louisiana and Washington, DC that partners a wide range of faith communities and other organizations around innovative social-change projects. He also serves as an Episcopal hospice chaplain.
New Orleans is sometimes seen as a quintessentially Southern place, but from another perspective it is the northernmost city in the long arc of the Caribbean archipelago and the last outpost of the tropics. Between Piety and Desire Streets in the Bywater, a Ninth-Ward neighborhood that feels more like the Antilles than Atlanta, runs Rosalie Alley. At first it seems unremarkable, if picturesque, bounded by Creole cottages and overhung with banana-palm fronds and crepe myrtle. Near the entrance lies an overturned yellow boat, a reminder of the Mississippi River nearby. Farther in, though, the walls and fences come alive with fantastic images. Smiling skulls of Papa Gede, the life of the party and tummler of Vodou; paintings of veve, the intricate traceries adopted from the Tainos native to the Caribbean and used to represent saints and spirits; and a black cross upon whose base is inscribed "Honneur et Respecte," the proper salutation for entering a peristyle, or Vodou sanctuary. At the end of the alley sits La Source Ancienne Ounfo, one of few if not the only peristyle in the United States.
The community there, led by their manbo, or priestess, Sallie Ann Glassman, is preparing to commemorate Hurricane Katrina. Every year since the storm, on the 29th of August they read aloud the names of the deceased, pray and bring offerings of water and sand to the site of the levee breach that inundated the Ninth Ward. Not so very different from Katrina commemorations at many other congregations around town. Vodou and Christian practices refract and interact in a syncretic dance that began centuries ago and is still inventing new steps. Near the start of hurricane season, on the day when Roman Catholic churches venerate Our Lady of Prompt Succor, the peristyle conducts its storm-prevention ceremony for her Vodou persona, Ezili Danto. Why did the ceremony fail to avert Katrina? Sallie Ann replies that even the divine is not proof against human folly. Ezili Danto issued multiple warnings of the danger, but none were heeded. For years, government policy encouraged coastal erosion, faulty levees and boondoggles like the MR GO channel that exposed New Orleans to catastrophe. When pressed, Sallie Ann adds that the flood waters stopped a half-block from La Source Ancienne.
Water is central to Vodou cosmology and history. Guinee, simultaneously our destination for the afterlife and the ancestral homeland of Africa, is pictured as a sunken island beneath the sea. We live upon the surface, but everything eternal is deep under water. The history of Vodou in the Americas begins three hundred years ago with the tortuous trans-Atlantic crossing bringing slaves from West Africa. Here they were converted en masse to Christianity and perfunctorily catechized via images of the saints, which were soon twinned with the lwa, or African spirits. For instance, a popular chromolithograph of St. Patrick expelling the snakes from Ireland identified him evermore with Danbala, an ancient serpent deity from the Congo Basin. Vodou transmitted African spirituality, made creative use of Christianity, added Native American healing arts and played a crucial role in the slaves' survival. The heartland of the religion is Haiti, where according to a well-worn commonplace, the population is "ninety per cent Catholic and one hundred per cent Vodou." It also has been practiced in New Orleans since the city's founding in the early 1700's. Haiti and New Orleans have long been connected by ties of history, trade, Creole language and religion.
Sallie Ann's preceptor is a grand old Haitian named Papa Edgard, and she brings her community to his peristyle in Port-au-Prince for their most important initiations. Vodou is deeply concerned with reglement, or the correct rules for religious practice, and La Source Ancienne in New Orleans is in many ways a deeply traditional place. If you stop in - it is open to the public on Saturdays - you will see the classical features of a Vodou sanctuary. The poto mitan, or centerpole, painted with Danbala and his consort, the rainbow serpent Ayida Wedo; the brilliantly sequined flags of St. Jacques and the Star of David; the towering main altars, heaped with candles and offerings and topped by statuettes of the Virgin Mary. When he visits, Papa Edgard says it feels like Haiti, in other words, correct. Sallie Ann, however, is not your grandmother's manbo. For one thing, she runs a vegetarian peristyle. No animal sacrifice: not even the lamb dinner you have on Easter nor the gefilte fish you eat during the Passover Seder nor the goat you share with the poor for Eid al-Adha. For another, she is currently developing a state-of-the-art healing center to serve the low-income residents of the Eighth and Ninth Wards as well as more affluent New Orleanians from across the city.
The healing center will include a full spread of complementary healing practices as well as yoga, childcare, art galleries and an organic market. The plans also envision a sacred space open to all religions, so recently Sallie Ann engaged the Harvard Pluralism Project and my organization, Interfaith Works, to convene an interfaith leadership meeting. Several dozen participated: Buddhists, Jews, Native Americans, Catholic and Episcopal chaplains, the director of the feeding ministry at the local Hindu temple, the Imam of a nearby masjid, or mosque, and Baptist pastors from the neighborhood who had literally rolled up their sleeves and rebuilt their churches after Katrina. Papa Edgard was there too, visiting from Haiti. One Christian approached him to say "My religion teaches the opposite of what you do." Edgard considered this and responded, "The God of Africa is the God of us all." The meeting concluded in a spirit of mutual respect, and from it has flowed further interfaith conversation around affordable health care and community recovery. Sallie Ann is taking Vodou in new directions that always refer back to the most fundamental tradition of this and many other religions: the tradition of service.
The content of this blog reflects the views of its author and does not necessarily reflect the views of either Eboo Patel or the Interfaith Youth Core.
By
Eboo Patel
|
August 29, 2008; 5:19 PM ET
| Category:
Interfaith Issues
,
Religion & Leadership
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The Faith Divide
,
Theology
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Posted by: S | September 13, 2008 2:34 PM
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Wow this is so cool!
I love how people of different backgrounds were brought together at the interfaith leadership meeting. Its so great that the Vodou healing center is being used as a link between different faiths. It seems like this is a big step towards religious harmony.. and I am interested to see how it affects relations between religious leaders elsewhere. Congratulations to everyone who took part! :)
Posted by: Shalini | September 13, 2008 12:18 AM
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Its an enlightening experience to learn that there is hope for all religions and/or spiritual practices to exist side by side in harmony and tolerance. Congrats to all those involved in such an effort.
Posted by: LA | September 11, 2008 10:46 PM
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amazing story! it's great to hear about all the various faiths coming together to do something positive in new orleans. i can see where this nonprofit fits in, but how did the harvard pluralism project get involved?
Posted by: SP | September 11, 2008 6:03 PM
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First, I'd like to congratulate you all on the tremendously beneficial work that is being done.
Also, I'm intrigued about the Harvard Pluralism Project. Tell me more!
Posted by: Hame Persaud | September 11, 2008 9:59 AM
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Erik,
Thank you for your post!
You introduce Vodou in a respectful and informative way. As a student of Vodou Studies and supporter of interfaith concord, it is refreshing to encounter such a balanced view.
It was great to take part in the Interfaith meeting and I am looking forward to making it an annual event.
Saumya,
ALB Candidate in Religious Studies,
Harvard University
Posted by: Saumya | September 11, 2008 3:02 AM
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Many hurrays to Erik Schwarz who taught me so much about something I knew so little about. This country, the United States of America, is the most diverse place on earth and continues to challenge, fascinate and educate the rest of the world. We thank the lord "Gustav" had the "courtesy" to be more gentle with New Orleans than Katrina was.
BSG
Posted by: barbro_greene@yahoo.com | September 3, 2008 10:30 AM
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As a native New Orleanian just over 40, there yet remain things about my beloved city of which I am unaware; Thank you, Mr. Schwarz, for illuminating this little but vital bit of it. For a non-local, you seem to have a knack for finding and revealing New Orleanian Gems and I'm glad of that.
RT
Posted by: Richard | August 31, 2008 2:07 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
I am heartened and encouraged by the work of Sallie Ann and all those that work with her toward the goal of unifying for the ultimate greater good. Proof that, yes, we CAN all get along in a spirit of respect and harmony.
Congrats and good work!