hurricaneeffects

How much can we read into events? How do we know when something is sent from above, or when it's just happenstance?

These are always difficult questions. Here, we tend here to err on the side of the supernatural. Right now in Texas is extraordinary interest in a statue of Jesus that appeared in the Rio Grande River, with no one claiming it and near a spot where immigrants have recently drowned.

We know there are always questionable claims (from weeping pictures to natural formations that resemble holy figures) -- but we also know that throughout history God has spoken through precisely such signatures.

It was phenomena occurring with statues that led to the foundation of countless churches in the early days of Christianity [see The Last Secret for a 2,000-year history].

Here we speak literally. You may have seen the photo of one of the few remaining billboards near Orlando [above left]. As so many were, the current advertisement had been shredded by Charley or Frances or Jeanne (as so many were), leaving exposed a previous one that said, "'We need to talk' -- God."

It had been part of a religious billboard campaign that has brought various "messages" to spots around the nation; now there it was near a meteorological "ground zero." The eyes of three of the recent hurricanes have crossed directly over Polk County near that Orlando sign -- mystifying even the secular press.

"Forget the infamous Bermuda Triangle," noted the Daytona Beach News-Journal. "The bigger mystery in Florida this summer is the amazing paths the eyes of three hurricanes took across the state -- within about twenty miles of each other in just six weeks. A sea of blue tarpaulin across the region's rolling hills, countless blue tarpaulins doing duty as temporary roofs... Call it fate, bad luck, call it punishment from God," the newspaper said.

We took a trip over the weekend to view the damage and along the highway it was all about billboards. There was some injury to trees near places like Cape Canaveral and Daytona but nature held up and the most obvious damage -- often the only noticeable damage -- was to billboards that had advertised offshore casinos, hot motorcycles, sexy surf shops, and luxurious condominiums right there on the ocean where condominiums were never meant to be built and where hotels have ruined vistas that God had intended for everyone.

The storm was especially tough on honky-tonk stretches of bars, strip joints, and tattoo parlors.

Incredibly, virtually every billboard had been blown down on a long stretch of Interstate 95 down Florida's central east coast except one that said, "God loves you. Jesus is Lord."

Billboard after unsightly commercialistic billboard had been ripped to shreds or pummeled to the earth and along Route A1A in Daytona Beach at a spot that suffered severe beach erosion was a hotel with a sign that said, "Having an affair? Do it here."

The sign had survived but the beach in front of the hotel -- its lifeblood -- had not, the erosion threatening the area's very tourist industry.

Don't get us wrong: the good also suffered (as always during a purification) but peculiar it was how the hurricanes, unprecedented in the state's history (where many long-term residents have never seen one, let alone four), seemed to be pushing away both the sleaze and the commercialism.

Over-hyped? Yes. To a degree the media overplayed the storms, perhaps causing more deaths from high-blood pressure than from the meteorology itself. How merciful God has been. The death toll from Jeanne: six! There were cases of that many or nearly that many dying in severe car accidents.

But there were certainly parts of the state that had been severely affected (thousands of damaged homes), and it was the immediate vicinity of the ocean that incurred the vast majority of that injury (while in many cases a few blocks away there was nearly nothing but downed branches).

How God works is a mystery. On Pensacola Beach a correspondent reports that two churches were the only buildings left standing in one hard-hit stretch, along with a cross erected by the Knights of Columbus. Other churches in the state were damaged. "There was an area of about five miles that was natural with sea oats and huge sand dunes that was so beautiful there," wrote the resident. "It was wiped out. Every year there at the end of May or early June, thousands of homosexuals came to romp on this secluded beach and hold a convention of sorts. I believe God does get angry, very angry as when He was slapped in the face like at Sodom and Gomorrah."

From Donaldsonville, Louisiana, we hear from Susan Jumonvville:

"I don't know if you know that we have at least 13 Adoration chapels going in fifty air miles in the south Louisiana. I really think that is why we are being protected against these storms. I know that we will have our turn -- but you have to agree that it looks like something is protecting us."

Meantime, out in the Gulf of Mexico, dozens of oil rigs, hundreds, have been put out of operation and the most visible destruction of trees has occurred at luxurious country clubs. They are no longer quite so luxurious. They are no longer so "exclusive."

In the Caymans, Hurricane Ivan caused postponement of a major fashion show, while the most damage, a true catastrophe, occurred in Haiti -- home to many good poor people (who suffered as victim souls) but also the place, the incredible place, where voodoo -- where demon worship -- is the official religion.

"My parents used to go to Key West for two months in the winter and my father told me about this," notes reader June Klins from Upstate New York. "On the grounds of the Catholic Church (Mary Star of the Sea), the people built a Lourdes grotto around 1930 and prayed that Our Lady would protect them from hurricanes. My father said that since the grotto was built Key West has never had any major damage from hurricanes. By the way, there is a Perpetual Adoration chapel there, too," she added.

Oct 2004