Hear Our Voice

• it's not for a post HH days vacation and
• it's not to perform a wedding and
• it's not to dive deep into the history of the Jewish pirates of the Caribbean (more on that later…)

I am in Puerto Rico this week for an interfaith clergy service trip.  Our group of Rabbis, Ministers, an Imam, and reps from the Houston Jewish Federation and Islamic Relief have descended on Dorado, PR where we are continuing our post-hurricane relief work in which we have engaged for the past year – up until now, post Hurricane Harvey throughout Houston and now post Hurricane Maria work in Dorado, PR. 

However, our work here is an experience unto itself.  I remember well hearing the following phrase in the days that followed Hurricane Harvey…”Natural disasters do not create crises, they reveal them.”  This truth is strikingly apparent here.  This is a picture of the cave in which the residents of La Hormiga took refuge as Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc with 165 mph, category 5 hurricane winds thrashing and destroying their, to begin with, very meager homes. 

This cave was all they could access and all they could afford.

This cave is a 5-minute hike into the jungle from La Hormiga, a squatter community that has been in existence for many years – at least long enough to be connected to electricity and water as well as the US Postal service.  That said, because these residents (and US citizens) do not have land titles, they did not qualify for FEMA assistance (many of them have tried numerously and quite creatively to obtain legal titles to the homes they have built, but to no avail). 

We are spending our week with other volunteers and led by a phenomenal organization, Hunger Corp.  Hunger Corp started because a young Puerto Rican man named Steven decided to use his engineering know-how to help suffering communities in the Amazon obtain access to fresh water.  But he understood that water wasn’t enough. He taught us all last night at dinner that service without transformation is just transaction.  If peoples’s lives are going to be changed, its going to happen not because they now have resources provided to them, but because they themselves have been invited and inspired to find resources from within themselves. And because, in the midst of his transformational work in the Amazon, his "hometown", Puerto Rico, had gotten pummeled and was in need of his very creative organizational work, they have adopted La Hormiga for a minimum of three years!  For more of this story, please be sure to join us this Friday night for Show Up For Shabbat.