How Hurricanes Keep You Holy

Every year, between June and November, we Floridians enter Hurricane Season. And every year one of the fifteen or so named storms makes a projected b-line across our homes (see Ernesto). In a lot of ways, its a pain in the booty. You have to secure your home, find all of your important papers, pack the car with family, and drive somewhere or hide somewhere until the threat subsides.

The upside is that, every Hurricane Season, we must go through a moral evaluation. In short order we must determine what is replaceable and what is priceless. The fact that we can fit all that is priceless into a small SUV shows just how much of our life is filled with distractions, with excess, with unnecessary things. We realize that, since we can't even take most of our items with us in an emergency that we certainly can't take any of it with us if we die. That all of it left behind can be rebuilt or re-bought. That only those people in your family, or the items that express your faith and a perhaps few precious items are the only things that have value beyond this world.

If we're smart, we can use Hurricane Season as an annual way to purge us from earthly distractions and materialism and, instead, direct our focus more fully on those people that would sit next to you in your SUV while you drive away from all that is replaceable and expendable.