Hurricane Katrina - "Don't push the water"

One year ago today Huricane Katrina was causing havoc in New Orleans. The City and much of the Gulf Coast is still recovering. Hurricanes "push" the water. This phenomenon is called a storm surge. The eye of a hurricane can raise a dome of water fifteen feet high and fifty miles across. This build up of water moves ahead of the hurricane where water pushed by fierce winds can rise up to thirty feet. New Orleans sits below water level. It is no wonder that this was the worst natural catastrophe in the nation's history. We would do well not to emulate a hurricane in our own lives.

The Franciscan Richard Rohr suggests that life is like a flow of water. We are already in it. We do not need to push it. But of course we all do. We can be so goal oriented that we miss the flow of life around us. We conduct business on cell phones not just in the office but in the car and as we walk along the street. We are logged on, plugged in and wound up. Between 1973 and 2000 the average U.S. worker added 200 hours per year on the job. We can be a "hurricane" of activity. Yet if we were to let go even a bit we would discover a flow of life already moving through us. It is the natural movement of the grace of God.

We also try to "push the water" by being in perfect control. I suppose a "storm surge" of control is one way of putting the anxiety of change and chance at arm's length. But it may be that the experience of vulnerability and anxiety have someting to teach us, if we can only say "yes" to the flow of life, the grace of God, that bears us along.

It is instructive to watch Jesus at work. When Jesus is overtired he pauses to rest or withdraws to pray. On one of these occasions he encountered a Samaritan woman and asks her for a drink. What is interesting is that he does not push her but instead receives her story. It is a story of five husbands and a sixth who is not her husband. She herself has been "pushing the water!" Jesus does not surge forcefully back but gently orients her toward light and freedom, toward the flow of grace that is already around her.

Life is not about how high a storm surge we can create. It is not about a hurricane of activity or an all-consuming agenda. It is not about perfect control. It is about giving in to the flow of God's grace, the agenda of God's kingdom that is the mending of creation, then all the rest will be given. Life is part of a much larger stream than anything we can push. We just need to allow it to flow. Our ability to trust this flow of God's grace is what we call "faith."