I had the chance to “do lunch” and spend much of the day with John Smestad, (pictured below with Shannon at the recent NCYC)

Cecilia Matherne,
Garrett and Shannon

in their temporary home of the youth office of the diocese of Baton Rouge. (Many thanks to Cooper Ray, Peggy LeBlanc and Charles Jumonville for housing my evacuee ministry friends!)

It was good to see their camaraderie and humor as they piece back resources (basically everything was lost; their office got 11 feet of water!) and strategies to continue to creatively serve the parishes of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

The laughter did my soul good. I have worried about John and the staff. Even though I live less then 5 miles from the beginning of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, I still “cannot wrap my mind” around it all. When I spoke with John in the days and weeks following the storm, I heard a little of the pain, the grief, the wondering and it became, by association, very real for me.

It was a good thing for us to talk, laugh, enjoy a meal. Somehow, the experience reminds me of the song we often sing at mass: “We Remember, We Celebrate, We Believe!” There was time for memories and some celebrating of that past and the present (they/we are still able to be, and work, and get, together). Most of all, as I watched them decipher waterlogged and mold affected copies of documents, and I was watched them get addresses so they could write grant proposals to rebuild their resource library, I got the sense of “We Believe.”

My friends gave me living examples of “the mystery of faith.”

There is sunshine after the rain.