Today is Fat Tuesday, the last night before the Lenten season begins for many Christian faiths. Mardi Gras, which is French for Fat Tuesday, ends tonight and many people will be celebrating on the streets of New Orleans as they have for 150 years. I have never been to Mardi Gras, and short of Snoop Dog's infomercial for Girls Gone Wild and the prevailing connection between beads and nakedness I don't know much about it.
I know that tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and I'll begin my soda fast and attend a service where I am asked to repent of my sins and receive an ashen cross on my forehead. As I think about Mardi Gras, New Orleans, and all that has transpired in the past year, I can't help but think of how many people were affected by the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast this August. If our country is being honest with itself there is much to ask forgiveness for in the wake of these hurricanes, as well as many of its victims who acted on their lesser instincts and resorted to looting and violence that have much to repent for.
But there are also amazing stories of those helping hands and inspiring heroes in the midst of disaster who offered us the example that we can act on our greater instincts as well. Here is a window into the story of Katrina and Rita in New Orleans, a photoblog of the devastation and damage, with glimpses of man's great capacity to lift one another from the ash and mud of the worst the world can offer.
I offer this up as a visual meditation. Feel free to pray, chant, scroll quickly past, weep, respond, send money to a charity on behalf of the victims or ignore these images. I just found them useful in putting my silly problems in persepctive today.
In all Katrina cost $75 billion (costliest storm of all time) and 1,420 lives. it will be years before the area is over the devastation and as of right now it is not safe for most groups to go and work. (I looked into taking my youth there on our mission trip.)
What does this have to do with Fat Tuesday/Ash Wednesday?
It is so easy to look at such tragedy on a large scale and see the worst in humanity. We see how we let each other down, how we saw one another as threats and competitors, and how we sunk to low levels of compassion in the midst of crisis. But this is an extreme oversimplification of what transpired.
We can also see the triumph of the human spirit when we see people lifting each other from the rushing water, jumping in to save one another, sharing food and shelter in the darkest hour. This too is an oversimplification of what happened.
We look at ourselves in much the same way. We see all of our flaws and come down so hard on ourselves sometimes that no one could be motivated to respond. Or we see ourselves in the light of our surroundings and think we're not that bad.
The service of Ash Wednesday is one of coming to terms with our shortcomings and then casting them off. We place a cross on ourselves to signify that we belong to Christ. Our problems do to.
If Jesus isn't your thing, then I suggest you dig a whole and write all your flaws and failures down and bury them. Or burn them. Somehow come to terms with them and then let them go. Perhaps Fat Tusday is on the wrong end of Lent. We should celebrate after we've overcome our lesser moments.
I believe New orleans will rise again in my lifetime. Why? Because it is a city of people, and though we are imperfect creatures capable of such malice and wrong, we are also capable of such beauty and love, nothing can destroy us.
"O afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted,
I will build you with stones of turquoise,
your foundations with sapphires
I will make your battlements of rubies,
your gates of sparkling jewels,
and all your walls of precious stones.
All your sons will be taught by the LORD,
and great will be your children's peace." Isaiah 54:11-13
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