We Are The Champions

As a psychic in New Orleans, you can only imagine how many times I have been asked about the Saint’s going to the Super Bowl. For close to 20 years I suffered the “kill the messenger” feeling of having to say that I didn’t see it happening that year. So beleaguered we Saint’s fans, so dedicated and so often disappointed.  Four years ago, on a radio appearance on our local Fox station, I was asked, yet again, if I saw the Saint’s taking us to Super Bowl. It was the first year after the storm and we all so needed some good news. I had to say no, that I didn’t see it but I followed that up by saying that in 4 years we would be there. I couldn’t believe that these words came out of my mouth but they did. The odds against that prediction were staggering when pigs fly etc…, but that was what spirit told me and that is what I said. I’d near forgotten it but was reminded by a sports fan who had taken note. I took note and when football season began I started making good luck gris-gris, lucky charms, for the Saint’s and watched and waited with my fellow New Orleanians as week after week we won, 13 weeks straight! Even if the loss of the 14^th game was it, those wins had begun to heal us. Black and Gold fever had come along to ease the lingering funk that most of us greeted daily. These days you could smell the spicy scent of glory in the air and see the bright smile of possibility return to our eyes.

I was out of town on the day that we won entrance into Super Bowl. After receiving numerous texts and calls from home about it I joined the Who Dat Nation and continually, like a mantra, chanted our “Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints” anthem. I was driving my way back through a nine-state tour and everyone along the trip who saw my Louisiana license plate honked at me in solidarity. Clients and friends from across the US let me know that they were rooting for New Orleans. We were certainly the underdogs and in today’s chaotic climate, all Americans needed a feel-good story to cling onto and we were it and you know that every New Orleanian grasped onto that support with open arms. We had all but been wiped from the map a few years back and had been battling to rebuild with little glory to this point. One politician, not to name names but Dennis Hassert said that New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt. Wonder how he’s feeling about that proclamation now, but I digress. We were feeling the love of the entire country as they began to feel that if New Orleans can make it anyone can. You might, at this point, wonder what this has to do with spirituality. Well let me tell you, we all need to recognize spiritual experience in its many guises in order to know the divine. One man’s football game was an entire city’s redemption and it only takes a moment to lay a whole new playing field. “The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform”

On the night of the game, I sat quietly in my home way too emotional to watch TV. I waited surrounded by candlelight and icons, silent in prayer and supplication, knowing that the moment that we won I would hear the spontaneous eruption of joy. I knew with all of my heart and soul that this win was certain. It began with the boats along the river blowing their stacks, then the train whistles, then the victory cries pouring out of each household, and finally the fireworks. I walked outside, knelt upon the ground, and wept like a baby. My city, my heart, my home. We are back and we are going to be O.K. now. It is the will to the spirit that won for New Orleans and it won for everyone who has ever been defeated and has had to fight like hell to get back up. Much of the Saint’s win was, in my view, divine. Experts had us down and out only hours from victory within our grasps. It all changed in one moment, we did it and so can you. No matter how impossible the dream it truly can come true against all odds. Keep at it and be not disheartened. Year after year we failed and came back next season. No matter what. Within each of us lies that fortitude and this just might be your championship season, your shining hour.