Katrina suffering

As I think about the suffering and death caused by Katrina, the images from TV and the paper won't leave. Some of the phrases from Psalm 88 (Grail translation) come to mind:

LORD my God, I call for help by day;
I cry at night before you.
Let my prayer come into your presence.
O turn your ear to my cry.

My life is on the brink of the grave.
I am reckoned as one in the tomb;
I have reached the end of my strength,
like one alone among the dead,
like the slain lying in their graves,
like those you remember no more,
cut off, as they are, from your hand.

You have laid me in the depths of the tomb,
in places that are dark, in the depths.

I am drowned beneath your waves.

As for me, LORD, I call to you for help;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
LORD, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face?
Your fury has swept down upon me;
your terrors have utterly destroyed me.

They surround me all the day like a flood,
they assail me all together.

Friend and neighbor you have taken away;
my one companion is darkness.

+ pax