I know, I know. A Super Bowl game is not going to erase all of Hurricane Katrina. It doesn’t make “everything” better. But to listen to folks from the Gulf Coast talk, it’s the best thing that’s happened there in a long time. I’m so glad the Saints won, and (with all respect to the Colts) I think a whole lot of America was rooting with/for them.

Lest we forget, not everybody stayed in New Orleans after Katrina. Not only people, but even the basketball team left. Lots of folks thought the Saints should pull out and leave.

I love the story about how, when Shawn Peyton recruited Drew Brees, he drove him into the 9th Ward. To hear some tell it, it might have been an accident.

But the legend is now that Brees fell in love with the city, and the idea that it needed some hope to help bring it back. He was in the midst of rehabbing a bum shoulder and it wasn’t a certainty that he could come back.

As he said on Sunday:

“Here we were as a team, trying to rebuild, just like the city was trying to rebuild….I’m coming off that shoulder injury trying to rebuild my shoulder and my career. It’s kinda like, ‘hey, let’s do this together. By leaning on each other, we can give each other strength and hope for something great in the end….I just saw the potential that New Orleans had, really because of the people. People are so passionate…. They have so much invested, that they’re not going to give it up.”

This quote is from a pretty nice story by George Diaz of the Orlando Sentinel, called “New Orleans QB Drew Brees: How a city in ruins healed a broken man”

It’s a nice read, and my Daily Grat is for the Saints, for Drew Brees, and for whatever healing this win can bring.

(During this year, my goal is to find something new to be thankful for every single day, and to add that thanksgiving as a blog entry, under the title “My Daily Gratitude.” I started this kick back around Thanksgiving, and it’s already resulted in a favorite new song of mine. The goal of this ongoing spiritual exercise is to see if doing such a thing might inspire even more gratitude within me, and to foster general awareness of life on a deeper level.)