In the song American Pie, Don McLean sings, “drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry…” The levees might have been dry then, but today they are submerged by the wrath of Hurricane Katrina. As bad as it was, New Orleans was spared a doomsday scenario that some experts have predicted for that area. Had Katrina not shifted, hurricane waters could have spilled over levees and swamped the saucer-shaped city in a toxic soup of refinery chemicals, sewage and human bodies.
Once again we see, and it’s happening with more frequency, the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in a year, the lives of hundreds of thousands tossed upside down at a moment’s notice. It should be a reminder to us all that we control absolutely nothing – we’re here today, gone tomorrow. Many people just don’t get it, even when they’re told of impending doom they decide that nothing is going to happen to them or they are so attached to material things that they don’t want to leave them behind.
Sometimes I wonder how much we really grasp of what we see on TV. The death and destruction that comes across our screen on a daily basis has somehow dulled our sense of reality. I feel like we have become like Thomas, the doubting one. We don’t actually grasp the true meaning until we actually touch and feel the wounds for ourselves. It’s like the mantra of the war that’s been repeated ad nausea, “Better to fight them there, than having to fight them here.” We have just watched another disaster movie, OK, that wasn’t too bad, but I need something with more action, more violence. It's the how can we top the last movie mentality that's driving a lot of us.
While I was watching aerial shots from a helicopter of the devastation, the reporter was saying that many people were in jeopardy of not being rescued from their rooftops because of the lack of boats available to them. They only had two boats to service a wide area. It’s okay to expend all kinds of money to position reporters and tons of equipment from local, national and cable TV stations that way America gets live shots from some dope standing at the beach to show us what 130 MPH winds and 20 foot waves look like, but we can’t find another boat to save some poor bastards life.
And I’m just as bad, clicking from CNN to MSNBC to FOX to see if one has a better shot than the other. Then I watch Larry King as he takes calls from people that have left the state and are now calling hoping to get some information about their hometown. He asks the reporters on the scene however they cannot provide any information to these worried souls. The rain had stopped outside; I changed the channel to watch the Red Sox. So much for the hurricane, I need a diversion.
A short time later, I turned the TV off and I sat and stared at the blank screen rehashing what I’d just experienced. I’d been around the world in a matter of minutes. I got a glimpse of Iraq and the news of the loss of another soldier’s life, nothing new there. I was taken to Aruba to find that nothing changed on the plight of the missing girl. Then I came back to the US and spent some time watching the devastation caused by the hurricane. With a click of a button I was looking in Fenway Park and watched a bunch of millionaires playing a kid’s game. In between all of this I watched many people tell me why I should by their particular product. In the course of an hour I was bombarded with a lot of pictures and a lot of information.
One hour of that was enough for me. I decided that I needed some quiet time. Time to spend in reflection and prayer. Time to pray for all that were impacted by the latest storm. Time to thank God for giving me another day.
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