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The ark of safety and hope
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
I live in Lubbock, Texas, a city of about 250,000 people, with a major university and citizens with big hearts. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, our city has taken in 600 evacuees, and we are expecting more.
Our children are prepared to greet student-evacuees who may be attending school with them. Our universities are opening spots for other college students to continue their fall semester. Our banks and grocery stores have funds one may contribute to, our churches are opening their doors and our dehydration plant, which normally sends food internationally, is sending food for about 12 cents a meal right over the border to Louisiana. We may be 870 miles from New Orleans, but we are here with open arms.
I have a statue in my office that represents a phoenix—a mythological bird that was consumed by fire and rose, renewed, from its ashes. It reminds me that even in the midst of death, hopelessness, sorrow and heartache, there is the potential to rise above them all, above the ashes of mortality, to renewal, beauty, hope, safety, peace. Like the mythological phoenix, can we rise above the images of destruction to renewal and hope? I think we can.
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