Rector's Reflection—14 Pentecost, Proper 17
August 29, 2010

I was teaching Latin in East Fort Worth. Along with vocabulary and grammar skills, I expected students to learn some Roman history. Had one been listening at the door and heard the class' reaction, one might have thought I had asked each student to donate a kidney... right that minute. "Why do we have to know that? This is Latin class," they whined. Evidently they were not yet cognitively developed enough to see the big picture. They were, after all, only in high school... in a magnet school... for gifted students.

"Do we have to know dates?" "Yes. Not many; just the really important ones." "Aaaaaww. No fair."

Did I mention they were whiny? I said that some dates are just so important that they are iconic. I said that I could remember not only the date but where I was and what I was doing when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Couldn't they??

One young man in the front row quietly said that he hadn't been born yet... but—I think just to make me feel not quite so idiotic—he did say he sort of remembered when John Lennon was killed.

November 22, 1963. It was a day when everything changed. Innocence was lost. The future that JFK had been articulating only hours earlier, was now as dead as he was. What would the world look like, had November 22, 1963, been just a normal day?

Or April 4, 1968? Again, everything changed. Innocence was lost. The future that MLK had been articulating only hours earlier, was now as dead as he was. What would the world look like had April 4, 1968, been just a normal day?

August 29, 2005. It was a day when everything changed. More than innocence was lost. Hopes; dreams; lives; livelihoods. People had talked and watched and prepared, but there was nothing that could have prepared anyone for the devastation that was Hurricane Katrina. What would the world look like, had August 29, 2005, been just a normal day. What would the world look like had Katrina been just a normal hurricane?

It has been both a short and a long five years. Remarkable recovery has been made, certainly in terms of rebuilding lives and rebuilding homes and businesses. Of course, more remains to be done. But the legacy of Katrina is not simply new roads and buildings... not simply a mention in record books as being the costliest national disaster ever or one of the deadliest hurricanes ever. The legacy of Katrina... the impact of August 29, 2005... is that it introduced a new way of being normal. Some people with roots deep in South Mississippi have left and aren't coming back. They have redefined their normal. Trinity Church, Pass Christian, was able to rebuild on its old site... only 20 feet up in the air... a new normal. Growth and future planning all around Katrina's path are based on a new normal.

My pastoral theology professor talked a lot about ‘marker events.' He told us to be sensitive to them, and, in many cases, intentionally commemorate them. Births. Deaths. Marriages. Divorces. Retirements. Illnesses. Graduations. Marker events were those critical events in people's lives... events (intentional or accidental) that took them down roads that would change their lives forever. If Katrina doesn't fit the definition of a marker event, I don't know what would! Over the years, I have come to appreciate more and more that the marker events in our lives—whether they are delightful or devastating—are inseparable from the sacramental life of the church. They find their celebration or their redemption in God's house, in the midst of the community of the faithful. Our liturgies take marker events and, with God's help, transform them from incidents to instruments of faith. Our liturgies remind us that God is in charge... that, in the words of the Hymn 665, "All [our] hope on God is founded; he doth still [our] trust renew, [us] through change and chance he guideth, only good and only true..."

Today is a day that naturally causes us to reminisce, but it is also a day that reminds us of the resilience of the human spirit, made strong through the gift of the Holy Spirit, enabling us to make our painful yesterdays a positive element for our unknown tomorrows.

Susan+