We are the body of Christ … still!

I have lived on Highland Road in Baton Rouge for almost 12 years.  That’s longer than some but not nearly as long as others.   I have never in my entire time here witnessed, in certain areas, the type of flooding that has occurred during this past month.  A couple of weeks ago when we had those few days of constant, driving rain, the unthinkable almost happened.  Water stopped short of reaching my back door.   That has never even come close to happening.  Worse than that, however, are the homes in the area that actually flooded.  Several members of our church community have had to move out, at least temporarily.   Now, I’m no expert.  I’m not an engineer of any type, but it seems to me that this damage is due in large part to the continual building that is happening in and around our city. We are using up so much of our green space.   I drove down one of the streets in the Old Goodwood neighborhood where I grew up and at least half of the homes on that particular street are not the original homes.  

People buy old homes.  They level them.  And then builders come in and build huge new ones.   I have lived here all my life. I love the city of Baton Rouge, not Lake Baton Rouge.  Yet that seems to be where we’re headed.   As a church, we did all we could to help those victims of the 2016 flood, never thinking that it would happen in certain places.  Now it has.  I also hear talk of another development at the intersection of Bluebonnet and Highland. And God help us if anyone is ever allowed to develop the property behind the Pennington Center.  Will it stop?  Can it be monitored?  I have no idea.  In fact, as do so many others, I feel powerless before this trend that continues to put more and more areas in and outside of the city at risk.   I do, however, still believe in the power of print media. So, that’s why I thought I’d take a chance and write this column.  For most of my life there was sense of community in our city.  Now I worry.  I think this type of gobbling up of green land is selfishness and greed in its purest form.   I just wish we could all come together on this.  At the risk of sounding arrogant or at least over confident, I’m going to end by quoting from a talk that I will be giving to some of our priests in July. “The body, indeed, has many parts. Each of us is a part. None of us is the whole.”  
Father Nelson is pastor at St. Jude the Apostle Church in Baton Rouge. He can be reached at [email protected].