Forgiving the Superdome

Okay, Superdome. You’ve convinced me. I forgive you.

No, I won’t forget the color of death by which you were painted just a few years ago. Starving children, helpless mothers and desperate fathers aren’t easily sang and trumpeted out of your mind, no matter how many touchdowns you score. I won’t forget the onlooking world wondering about you, about how you became the symbol of good old fashioned American racism.

But I forgive you. Because your neighbors have forgiven you.

No greater dichotomy exists, not even a black man in a White House, to surpass the death and the resurrection that you have wrought. A storm came, and you were a less than a gracious host. A glimmer of hope arrived in the form of a football team, and now you’ve invited yourself into every living room in America for a season.

And for some reason, in spite of your flaws, we welcome you with open arms.

Perhaps its not you at all. Maybe its the people of New Orleans. The forgiving, unyielding souls who took the worst – your worst – and resigned themselves to rebuilding. They dug in deep where you crumbled. They held their heads high, when your roof was buckled and collapsed. And while the work remains unfinished, the spirits yet restored, its you who is their closest link to normalcy.

100 yards of salvation. And they more than deserve your best.

And by God, you’ve delivered. I’ll give you credit for reinventing yourself from house of shameful melancholy, to a vibrant arena of hope. The people went from saying “What Now,” to “Who Dat.” You had a great deal to do with it.

So I can forgive you. Just as generations of New Orleans’ families and loyalists have. Forgetting is something else, but I’m convinced that you have enough in you to turn this relationship bittersweet enough for my everlasting taste.