Tuesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time, May 30, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Weals and woes of Port Aransas
The Lord is one who always repays, and he will give back to you sevenfold. But offer no bribes, these he does not accept! Trust not in sacrifice of the fruits of extortion. For he is a God of justice, who knows no favorites.
Port Aransas, not far south of Galveston, Texas and just north of Padre Island, got whacked by a Category 4 hurricane named Harvey in August of 2017. It tore things up pretty bad, and South Jetty, the local weekly paper, had its work cut out. “Hell and High Water,” the headline read. This was by far the biggest weather news since 1970’s 175 mph Hurricane Celia.
Still, Galveston’s hurricane history was far worse. In 1900 8000 people were killed and the city was leveled by a fifteen foot storm surge. The largest city in Texas at the time lost everything. The story of their determination to rebuild inspires me.
Now we’re visiting Port Aransas, the calm collected tourist town between the storms, and everywhere I walk, there is something new. 2017’s destruction spawned new hotels, homes, and stores. But one small building on a hill did not fall down.
We are staying just a block or two away from the Chapel on the Dunes, built about a hundred years ago by astronomer and artist Aline Carter. After Sunday School in this tiny Episcopal church, she held cake and ice cream socials for many years.
It’s on one of the highest points in Port Aransas, but it survived Hurricane Harvey. And it’s a high point still, although weddings have replaced the ice cream socials. We weren’t in Port Aransas on Pentecost Sunday, I wish we could have been, sitting on the beach or climbing the dune up toward the Chapel, listening for the sound of Ruah, of the Holy Spirit wind, blowing off the sea.
And from your celestial home
Shed a ray of light divine!
Come, Father of the poor!
Come, source of all our store!
Come, within our bosoms shine.
You, of comforters the best;
You, the soul’s most welcome guest;
 Sweet refreshment here below;
In our labor, rest most sweet;
Grateful coolness in the heat;
Solace in the midst of woe.
O most blessed Light divine,
Shine within these hearts of yours,
And our inmost being fill!
 Miss Aline didn’t write this offering to the Holy Spirit (and the Latin is even more beautiful), but as Poet Laureate of Texas she did write “Doubt Not the Dream.” Hurricanes did not crush her spirit. It does seem, in fact, that many residents of the Texas coast have thrived on adversity and lifted themselves up to receive what God has for them next.
Many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.
We are glad to be here among them, if only for a few days.
Offer to God praise as your sacrifice and fulfill your vows to the Most High. He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me; and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.
 (Sirach 35, Psalm 50, Matthew 11, Mark 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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