The Great Work

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It was given to me during a training while I was still working for Partners in School Innovation. I was reminded of it while listening to a radio piece about how various popular "men of God" were coming up with reasons for why Hurricane Katrina hit the United States. They had all sorts of reasons - it was retribution for rampant homosexuality, it was revenge for abortion and the "culture of death," etc.

That's crap. Trying to blame natural disasters on our laws, or on things our leaders do, or on social trends, or anything that we have any control over is nonsense. How anyone can say otherwise, or believe otherwise, is beyond the comprehension of thinking, reasonable people (like myself!).

Buber's God says "Behold a truth which is known to me from the beginning of time, a truth too deep and dreadful for your delicate, generous hands, my sweet apprentice--it is this, that the earth must be nourished with decay and covered with shadows that its seeds may bring forth--and it is this, that souls must be made fertile with flood and sorrow, that through them the Great Work may be born."

I think he's right. The greatest people of any generation most show their true mettle in the face of great adversity. It is in the depths of despair that people most often find genuine truth and strength. What Great Work shall be born of disasters like these? What Great Work shall be done by those souls made fertile from the slowly ebbing waters of the gulf coast?