Editorial September 30, 1996 Issue

Why shouldn't prayer be like that?

William E. Moody

The road from New Orleans south, as it approaches Delacroix Isle, soon becomes a narrow two-laned blacktop that rims the coffee-colored waters of Bayou Terre aux Boeufs. Floats from crab traps punctuate the bayou's surface every few yards, while idle shrimp boats wait alongside cypress docks for another turn to pull their nets. Across the road, the houses of the fishermen and their families rest stolidly several feet above the ground on cinder blocks, as if to warn off any errant storm tides that might blow up from the Gulf of Mexico.

When the blacktop at last plays itself out, a hand-painted sign announces matter-of-factly "End of the World Marina." It feels that way. Beyond the shell-paved boat launch sits at least twenty miles, as the heron flies, of uncivilized marshland—the product after many thousands of years of the Mississippi River pouring out North America's topsoil along the river's vast Gulf Coast delta. Then, from the edge of the marsh grasses, Black Bay spreads out in a huge saltwater basin, teeming with gulls and terns and brown pelicans, sea trout and redfish, endless schools of mullet flapping along the surface, leaping sideways through the air to flash their silver-whites at the sun. And finally, Breton Sound swallows Black Bay; there are a few slim barrier islands, and the Gulf itself. From the mouth of Bayou Terre aux Boeufs, water is everywhere.

This afternoon we had made the run by boat down the bayou and stayed out on the bay until the sun would set. Only from the water, watching across the Louisiana marsh on hazy summer evenings, does the setting sun look exactly like this. It hangs there, just over the earth's edge. Then it hangs—and hangs. Red, orange. Orange, red.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

My first real proof of the healing power of the Comforter,...