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Good to hear from you. As you must know, the Storm inspired a great many conversations about the problem of evil and God's purpose in permitting great disorders of nature in this fallen world. The knee-kerk evangelical response is that Katrina was God's judgment on a sinful world -- as opposed to them, of course. Last week a rabbi well known for his pop self-help books opined here that Katrina was purely a natural event: "God was not in the hurricane", he says, yet somehow God is on our stout-hearted response. Oh, goody -- soothing liberal uplift, crafted with an eye to the marketplace in a profoundly Pelagian culture.

I have already offered my idea of what it all means, at another forum (the thread no longer exists):

We have been humbled and stripped. Maybe if we are stripped and humbled again and again and again, we will finally discover gratitude for what we we’ll have left at the end – thanksgiving, literally eucharist in this year of the eucharist – and maybe then we will finally discover holiness. And maybe that is why this Catholic city has been called to this terrible, transforming vocation.

Those who're too proud to be grateful are likewise too proud to realise all of creation needs a savior to defeat this beast Death. It's God's way to be so intent on our salvation that he strips away every impediment.

I hope you're well and happy. Though I'm all but invisible on the web these days, I think of my friends often, with affection and gratitude. I was married last month; we returned from Italy in mid-September and have been settling in. Thanks for the ping to this fine thread.