Ordinary Time!

According to the church calendar, the Sundays after Epiphany (the end of Christmas and, at least in New Orleans, the beginning of Mardi Gras) are the first part of what is considered "ordinary" time.

Well... the Sundays after Epiphany may be ORDINARY in other parts of the world; you know... shopping for specials, returning gifts we never really wanted, watching football and waiting for the belated Super Bowl. For those who haven't stopped attending church after their holiday inspired semi-annual participation in the Jesus cheerleading seminar, there is a whole other reality based on reflecting on the every day nature of our lives.

However, in New Orleans, ordinary is NOT a word I would use to describe the daily reality, at any time of the year, especially right now.

This Sunday I went to St. Augustine's Catholic Church in the Treme, a section of town, and a church building, that sustained some of the hardest hit reality of Katrina. This morning Donald Harrison Jr. played his sax, and directed most of the congregational music in a "Mardi Gras Indian Mass." Mostly it had to do with music from Harrison on sax combined with other musicians and the church choir in a sort of jazz mass celebrating the ongoing rebirth of the city.

After the two hour church service, I participated in a second line parade that brought together a whole collection of the city's "social aid and pleasure clubs" to focus on "bringing New Orleans back." Then, later in the afternoon, I had pizza and wine with friends before going to Monk Boudreaux's Indian paractice at Tip's.

The weather was gorgeous, the food is, like always, spectacular, and the Mardi Gras celebrations are ever so slowly beginning to make themselves manifest in this world of tears.

THIS is New Orleans... There is NOTHING ordinary about THIS ordinary time.