New Orleans

I thought this post on New Orleans had some good stuff.

I've had my trip to New Orleans and it was everything that I expected. My primary goal was to get to the Voodoo Museum where I made an offering to a Loa. Also during my trip I stayed at an old haunted mansion on the banks of the Mississippi somewhere near Baton Rouge. New Orleans is an incredibly spiritual city, where life is intertwined with death and the 'other' world, and/or the afterworld you may say, in a very public way. It's a place I considered moving to at one point.

When the water recedes and dead are counted and the stories are told, we're going to hear amazing things. Just as the first response to 9/11 was 'we will rebuild,' so are my thoughts about New Orleans. In a country where we constantly try to outlaw danger, from safety tags on virtually every item for sale to the fatwa on cigarettes, New Orleans has been our spiritual safety valve for unsafe living and indulgence. A place to let our dark sides come out and play. New Orleans contains our 'shadow,' as the Jungians would say.The people who live there are special, if a little quirky, and deserve our prayers and help.

I agree with this entirely: I always think of New Orleans as sort of a magical part of the country, maybe a place where different worlds come together. I like to think that it's someplace where you can reach things spiritual. Obviously, given it's role in the development of Voodoo, I'm not the only one. Anyway, we have to rebuild New Orleans and I thought this was an elegant explanation why.