28C Luke 21: 5-19 A Stewardship Story from the Gulf of Mexico, November 16, 2025.
The Gulf Coast 2010
“And there will be great earthquakes..dreadful portents, and great signs from heaven.”
It is mid-August, high tourist season on the Alabama Gulf Coast. We arrive at the condominium our family has visited for twenty-five years. No cars in the parking lot—no sunbathers on the white sandy beaches. No bathers swimming. At dusk, a covey of trailers arrives with beach cleanup workers wearing colored shirts. The color of their shirt is like a liturgical vestment (dalmatic or chasuble), signifying the worker’s duty.
A half hour later, a John Deere tractor pulls a trailer with more workers who set up a blue tent and folding chairs. They sift the sand for 20 minutes and then rest under the tent. Next, a lone person strolls like a verger or crucifer in a religious procession, ahead of a green tractor pulling a large machine raking the sand. At night, this tractor has large lights on either side like processional torches. The procession leader searches for flipper turtle tracks leading to a loggerhead turtle nest that the beach rake must not disturb. We see no pelican, Great Blue Herons, or dolphins. Only the squawking laughing gulls are unchanged in numbers.
No fishing boats leave the pass, venturing into the Gulf. At a restaurant, we easily find a favorite table. Most locals report their businesses have fallen off 30 to 60%. The commercial and charter fishermen and the shrimpers have entirely lost their businesses. No Gulf shrimp for St. Mark’s Shrimp Boil this year. At a marina, we watch charter fishermen hosing down their boats like boys on a Saturday afternoon washing their cars in expectation of that Saturday night date. For these fishermen, the date never materializes. We grieve for one charter boat captain who took our family fishing. He committed suicide. Henry’s, the local furniture store, is going out of business. Only Henry is there answering the phone, praying for last-minute orders.// Nearly 185 million gallons of oil has violated the Gulf since the explosion on the oil rig on April 20th, 4 months ago, which also killed eleven workers.//We have weathered major hurricanes —Ivan and Katrina —with this Gulf Coast community. This disaster, however, has more unknowns and far-reaching effects.
“By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
One month later. The oil well is finally permanently capped. We return to Paradise Island, as the locals call it. The parking lot is three-quarters full. At daybreak, three men and three children cast their lines on the surf for an early morning breakfast. They are joined by five Great Blue Heron free-meal stalkers, craning their long necks, observing every movement of the fishing lines. I cannot hold back tears as fishing boats leave the pass, heading farther out into the Gulf. Bathers frolic in the surf. My husband only finds two small tar balls on his morning beach walk.
Flocks of pelicans fly silently by. Dolphins swim in parade and occasionally jump for joy. Restaurants are crowded. It looks like resurrection. We attend a midweek Eucharist and healing service at a local church to give thanks. As members of the congregation and their priest, lay hands on each other at the altar rail for healing,/ they pray through their tears for the strength to meet
their present financial and personal losses. During the Eucharist, we hear a dog barking. At the peace, someone goes out to find a gray dog with matted hair in its kennel abandoned at the church door. The priest interrupts the service as Chan offers the dog water. Another parishioner will take the dog to a friend who “needs a dog.” Someone can no longer care for a special pet and leaves him with a trusted church family. At the vet’s, the parishioner learns the dog is a year-old purebred Lhaso Apso. This breed originated in Tibet and was bred as interior guard dogs for Buddhist monasteries. The thought is that the souls of the lamas enter the Lhasa Apso while awaiting reincarnation. //
We see scars in this community. But we experience a pastoral Episcopal church becoming a place of sanctuary and healing in the wake of disaster, where people share their pain and are surrounded and touched by the many hands of God.
A federal survey, however, reports tar balls still washing ashore with every wave/and bands of oil, buried under 4 or 5 inches of clean Gulf sand. The Old Bay Steamer in Fairhope closes Sunday. Sales bottomed out as people fear eating oil-contaminated local seafood, especially their specialty, the royal reds.
Our hearts ache. We stare into the Gulf for hope.
At the five o’clock bewitching hour, nine cars pull off onto the highway shoulder. Twenty people dressed in black emerge and walk to the beach. The apparent leader is a photographer. For two hours, the family gathers for candid shots. Farther down the beach, a trellis is covered with flowers. Four bridesmaids in red dresses arrive with the barefooted bride and groom. Another ancient liturgy
returns to the beach. At dusk, three people with lime green shirts approach a roped-off beach area. They carry a shovel, bucket, stethoscope, and surgical gloves. My husband and a half dozen children gather to observe this “medical” team. The green team leader demands perfect silence. Perfectly still. She lies on the beach with the stethoscope on the sand. She hears movement. They remove the wire mesh over the Loggerhead sea turtle nest, protecting it from coyotes and raccoons. They gently dig into the sand with surgical gloves, careful not to disturb unhatched eggs, and find six hatched baby loggerhead turtles that have just absorbed their yolk sac. Demeter herself could not have been more motherly, lifting the two-and-a-half-inch turtles to the bucket and transporting them to the shoreline. The green team digs a trench in the sand to the surf and places the sea turtles in it./ The crowd cheers as they ceremoniously parade awkwardly to the sea. Loggerhead turtles have nested on beaches worldwide for over 150 million years. It takes 25 to 30 years for loggerheads to reach sexual maturity. Only one in 1000 to one in 10,000 eggs reach adulthood. Will these six, by chance, be in this number?
“By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
Today. Fifteen years later, oil sediment remains in the seafloor, marshes, and wildlife. One study estimates that up to 10 million gallons of crude oil, or 4-31% of the spill, settled on the seafloor. Dolphin, sea turtle, and coral populations are decreasing.1
Our story is one of long-standing consequences when our environment is injured,/ but also about hope and endurance, and how we might respond to and prevent disasters in our natural world. Endurance is making a difference in incremental measurements every day.
When multiplied by a million or a billion, our small actions to protect our environment make a significant difference. To save what is still beautiful in this world, to save the planet for the future generations,/ our grandchildren,/ their grandchildren,/ we must routinely take actions daily. 2
Made in the image of God, we stand in as God’s representatives, God’s agents.
Here at St. Mark’s, stewardship is not seasonal. There is presently a large group of people dedicated to stewardship of this land where we comfortably sit,/ as well as the land, the river, and the sea around us. Our prayer is that if “great earthquakes, dreadful portents and great signs come from heaven” to our city, that St. Mark’s will become a pastoral center like the Episcopal Church on the Gulf.
Our story today comes from our own Gulf, where many here vacation each summer. But it is not our Gulf. It will soon be in the care of our grandchildren. Our hope also lies in the children, photographed with their families, the newly married couple on the beach, their groomsmen and bridesmaids, the three young early-morning fishermen on the surf, and in the half dozen children who cheered the baby sea turtles into the surf that magical night,/// and especially this morning/ to the children who will soon return from Children’s Chapel with Ashley who/ at this church/ are taught about being good stewards of the land/ and sea/ our God gifted to us/ to protect and share/ throughout all eternity./ This world is on loan to us. The question is—when we are gone, will we leave it in better/ or worse condition than we received it?
Joanna joannaseibert.com
1. Liz Kimbrough, “15 years after the BP oil spill disaster, how is the Gulf of Mexico faring?” in Conservation News.
2. Jane Goodall in Famous Last Words, Netflix.
//news.mongabay.com