Wednesday, May 29, 2024
This devotion was published in a slightly different version on May 30, 2023.
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Chapel on the Dunes
All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of the field; the grass withers, and the flower wilts, but the word of the Lord remains forever. This is the word that has been proclaimed to you.
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. Galveston was the largest city in Texas at the time, and its people 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 not far 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, Holy Spirit wind, blowing off the sea. Veni Sancte Spiritus.
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 poetry, including “Doubt Not the Dream.” Hurricanes never crushed 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.
Since you have purified yourselves by obedience to the truth for sincere brotherly love, love one another intensely from a pure heart. You have been born anew.
Of course, as with Jesus’ disciples, there is always jockeying for position. But the endless crashing surf has a way of settling things down, reminding its listeners of things eternal.
Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.
We are glad to be here among the survivors, if only for a few days.
(1 Peter 1, Psalm 147, Mark 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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