Day 119 - Queen of the Night

Often a simple pleasure is all I need (Though this tale may not seem all that simple).

For longer than I want to admit I’ve been carrying around an unusual plant wherever I’ve moved. I obtained a leaf cutting of a night blooming cereus, a cactus or epiphyllum, in 1972 during graduate school. I don’t know the age of the plant from which I obtained the cutting, but I believe it had been in some one's grandmother's house for some time.

Over the thirty six years as it got bumped or mangled I have taken the mangled parts and rooted them. Just thrust the leaf orstem in the soil and water it until it starts growing.

The etymology of the plant is interesting (google night blooming cereus). It is in the cactus family, but I believe there are a few obscure genus. It behaves somewhat like a mix of orchid and cactus. I’m not sure exactly which genus mine is. It has no spines, very flat leaves with a hint of angularity and root-like strands growing from the bottom of some older growth leaves.


Frankly, it is an ugly plant, long stems and green leaves that are easily broken. It has no particular value except for its spectacular blossoms. It takes quite a bit of abuse and that does leads me to believe it is of the cactus family.

Waiting for it to bloom requires patience and that is why some might not call this a simple pleasure. It took about five to seven years to first bloom to appear on my plants. One summer day in New Kensington I noticed a bud-like projection growing from the serration of a leaf.

The plant leafs this way and most of the time that is what appears, a new leaf, but not this time. Over several weeks this little protuberance grew into a large bud, about shaped like a fat screw driver handle about the size of a computer mouse. This bud was comprised of twisted tendrils wrapping the nascent petals.

One night in August after midnight I smelled a very strong lily-like odor in the house. I got up and walked around. I entered the darkened dining room and there in the west window of our dining room where I kept it to protect it from the cold northern winter stood the plant with an enormous fully opened bloom. Pit was perfectly white with yellowish stamen. Its petals stretched wide open as it to savor its own glory. It is truly an amazing beauty.

I found it hard to bloom. It is sensitive to changes in light and often buds appear but die back depending on the watering and sun exposure. I took the plant to San Diego and finally placed in on my back patio that was protected from direct sum by a suncloth on the overhead trellis. It loved that dry desert environment. After a couple of years it began to bloom profusely. One year it bloomed continuously from July to August, with perhaps twenty buds forming and flowering.

It followed me to Atlanta where it continues to bloom. Naturally when I came to Gulfport, I took one of the plants with me, not the old mother plant but two of the older rootings.

A month ago I noticed one of them had a bud, but I missed the flowering. The unique thing about this plant is its bud begins to open a little after sundown and within a few hours reaches it full glory. As morning approaches the flower begins closing up or is totally wilted, hanging from the leaf like some stringy fabric or sock.

I usually miss the blooming unless I watch the bud every day to follow as it slowly tilts up pointing slightly skyward. The day before it blooms, its edges begin to slip presaging the blossom. This is what happened in June, one of the earliest times I’ve seen it bloom.

It budded again a few weeks ago and last week the flower opened. Here it is from beginning about 9PM to its sad end about 6AM the next morning.

Here it is, the Queen of the Night (click on the image for a full view) :


At 9PM it begins to open.















2AM in its full glory.









6AM, fading fast.























A few days later after the stem and bud fell.























You can see the two buds in the creases (serrations) of the lower edge of the leaf in the image to the right. If you look carefully you can see the vein in the leaf that feeds the bud. Two more buds are in the making!

Day 118 – Youth Week - Serving Three Families in One Week (Saturday)

This week was Youth Week at Orange Grove. Twenty adults and teens from United Church of Canistota , South Dakota and six from Northside Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga worked really hard. They were as productive as any teams I have had., starting and finishing four jobs. One was an open one we have been working on for several weeks, the others were jobs we had not started until the youth volunteer arrivals.

Northside Team

The home of a single young woman with a grade school-aged son sustained a lot of water damage when the roof failed during Katrina and still was not repaired. We replaced flooring and painted the interior earlier. This week our goal was to complete the wall of the large rear laundry room almost the width of the home, install gutters and a new floor.

Last week the crew from First Presbyterian in Cleveland, TN accomplished the major rebuild of the laundry room walls. This week we had to install siding, window trim and a sheet vinyl floor. We sent one crew of six from South Dakota to this job.

The second job was new. A young single woman who has just gained custody of her two pre-grade school sons live in two rooms of a house that has languished since Karina with only little attention from recovery people. The water-soaked carpets had been stripped and drywall on the ceilings but the walls had not been stripped of drywall to remove moldy insulation, treat the wall and install new drywall. Unfortunately these two rooms are the bedrooms for these young boys. They are sleeping in the den, a converted garage. We assigned the second team from South Dakota to this home.

The third home is one we have been trying to get to since late winter (See Day 116). Within this small house live an 84-year old grandfather, an adult son, and Ms. Holiday, the owner of the home, the daughter with her elementary –aged daughter and her significant other. In addition they have opened their home to a fellow who was in a bad car accident a few months ago and has use of only one arm.

They have no kitchen and wash their dishes in a five-gallon paint tub in the shower. The main bathroom has plastic sheeting on the walls for privacy. Mrs. Holiday paid a contractor ten thousand dollars to build partition walls, install drywall and add an addition to the home with gutters (a very important part of the house down here where the ground is flat and the houses are built on slabs.)

The contractor left them with no drywall installed, a poorly poured concrete floor for the new kitchen, out of plumb partition walls, and a gaping hole in the wall where doors were to be installed in the carport. Ms. Holiday is the sole breadwinner for this extended family, save any public assistance they may receive. She has been buying as her funds allow, and receiving donated building materials.

We assigned one team from South Dakota to do the gutters, paint the exterior rear walls and install the door. We assigned the Northside crew to complete the drywall in the dining room, hall and bathroom, and strip the tile from the dining room. The drywall was a tedious, hard job due to out of square walls and frequent missing supporting rafters or studs in corners to hold drywall screws. (Earlier the Northside crew also spent one day stripping the kitchen floor in another client’s home.)

Because the week had afternoon activities scheduled three of the days we only really had about 3 and one-half days of real work time. I am so proud of all these youth. They all pitched in. While there may have been some complaining late in the week, I heard none.

This was a big activity day for the youth. They were scheduled to go to the Gulfport Water Park for the afternoon. The other crews made good progress and completed their work by noon and left for the Water Park on time.

The job went very slowly all week at Ms. Holiday’s due to the complications of the errant contractor. When Friday noon rolled around, finishing this job was looking bleak and I could see the anxious looks thinking about the water park. They all opted to delay or possibly miss the Water Park in order to remain at Ms. Holiday’s until we completed the work. The South Dakota troopers finished about 1PM. Even with me (or in spite of me), the Northside work did not finish until about 4PM. As the last piece of dry wall was screwed in, the youth were already mudding the joints behind us. I helped pack up all our tools sand remained to tidy up an talk to the family while Sandy and Rick drove all back to the village for swim suits. They still got in over two hours at the Water Park.


Ms. Holiday's Team

My hat is off to Sandy and Rick Leavell, and to Pastor John of the United Church. They were all great leaders and the youth great workers. All were positively influenced by the state of these homes, the gratitude of the homeowners and their good work.

This morning I ate breakfast with both teams. The South Dakota group left about 7AM for their two days’ drive home. I waved the Northside group goodbye as they pulled out of the parking lot for Chattanooga a little before 9AM.
These youth and leaders made it possible for one family to have their home fully completed, the mother and young boy stood at their door smiling and waving as hard as they could as the South Dakota group left.

The young grandmother with her two grandsons now only have to await finished painting of the walls, and to schedule the installation of the new carpet and the two boys will have bedrooms. I may go out myself next week or the week after with our Case Manager and finish those walls.

Ms. Holiday could not stop praising the Lord and thanking us. The fellow with the bad arm kept bring out watermelons for us and telling us he’d finish the sanding and painting the walls (He will do that, we had a hard time keeping him at bay while we put in the drywall.) The hole in the wall has a door and now thy can expect lower utility bills.

This was a week of serious work -four families in less than one week. I am so grateful for the wonderful adult leadership and the mature, whole-hearted effort of the youth. It was great to have some of my home church’s people here, and I hope there will be many more in the future. You have no idea what you are missing.

Peace and Grace,
Henry

Day 116– Why I Need You to Volunteer

We contacted a prospective client last January. Our Case Manager surveyed the home and needed repairs at that time. The house is in a part of town where the quality and repair of the homes varies quite a bit. The nature of the homeowners varies as much as the houses. It’s likely to say that this is not a neighborhood many of the people who read this blog would find themselves visiting.

I drove over last April to confirm the costs to repair the house. I turned off US49 and drove down a side street that became increasingly unkempt. After a few more turns and literally crossing the railroad tracks, I came into a neighborhood where there were driveways and bare lots, some of them had trash, an upside down sofa or a mattress, but no houses.

By now I can recognize the trash and bulldozed lots. The trash is detritus left after the winds and water of Katrina shredded the neighborhood. I could tell the houses on the empty lots had been razed, probably condemned due to the damage of Katrina.

This carnage went on for several blocks. On one lot I noted that two or three rough looking guys had taken over a trailer. A long electrical cord was strung on the ground, across the road and off into the property half a block away. They eyed me suspiciously as I drove by.

I turned down a final side street where some of the houses have bars on the windows or tall fences. I drove up and stopped by the mailbox carrying Christina’s address. The house was painted in a loud color and it had a new roof. Two cars were parked in the tight driveway and the yard was full of semi-tropical plants. A stack of drywall about a foot high rested in the carport.




Sunrise through Christina’s Palm












I knocked on the door. A youngish woman came to the door and I introduced myself. Christina invited me in. I was struck immediately by the interior. There was no kitchen, only an unfinished room that had been added on, with old cabinets but no sink. A gas stove stood in the dining room.

What bothered me was the interior bathroom adjoining the dining room. Someone had framed in a wall but there was no drywall. The only privacy for the bathroom was a three mil thick plastic sheet nailed to the studs.

She walked me through to the rear door through a hallway where a laundry room was partly framed in and a bathroom. At the opposite end of this hallway was a large plywood sheet. Christina said there is supposed to be a door there and asked if we would be able to install it. I found gutters in the back yard but the soffit and fascia boards still needed repair.

We went back into the house and sat in her living room. I went over her situation. She lived here with her elderly mother and father. The mother was an invalid and needed constant care to help her get in and out of bed and to attend to her personal needs. Her mother and father, both in their eighties and married over sixty years lived with Christina. Christina’s daughter lives there, as does her erstwhile boy friend. Her brother lived in the house, as did a fellow who had been badly injured in an automobile accident who needed a place to stay. Christina is the only person with a job.

She tells me Katrina blew most of her roof away. She had to bring her mother and father to he home because the other is so ill. She decided to add a room for the kitchen so they could make a bathroom large enough to accommodate her mother in a wheel chair. Doing this entailed tearing out the old kitchen and framing in some walls Christina paid a contractor ten thousand dollars to do this job and the guy left it half done.

I knew our case manager had verified the basic qualification of Christina for help and realized immediately we had to get people working on this house as soon as we could get funding and volunteers.

Christina's Father

As I left to go back to my office and start working on an estimate her father came out of the house. He asked me who I was, and what I was doing. I explained my job with PDA and we talked at length about how the church was helping and so important. We had a discussion that ranged widely about faith, the role of the family and his situation. We talked about his wife. He told me she was almost blind and depended on him or everything. If he left the bedroom she would begin to call out, “where is my Robert, where is my Robert?” He said he was pretty much tied down to the house because if he left for vey long mother would get too overwrought with concern.

He talked to me about his daughter. He said she was a good woman but facing a lot of temptations. He constantly encourages her to keep straight, especially when there is the temptation to stray. It is clear that Robert and Christina hold a lot of family together, people on the edge of slipping into that sea of alcohol, drugs and alienation. Amazed at how these two were holding an entire family together, I left very intent on getting back to this house as soon as I could.

Things didn’t work too well. We have been short on volunteers the last month. Only late Monday of last week when we had a work assignment fall through during the first day of youth week was I able to use this home as a fall back.

I called Christina late Monday and set up a time to come by to see what work remained. Then at 7:30AM Tuesday morning, I drove out Tuesday morning to meet Christina. The stack of drywall in the carport was gone. The kitchen was still absent. I walked into the laundry area and looked into the adjoining bathroom. A 5-gallon plastic can holding sudsy water and some dishes stood in a plastic chair in the shower stall. They had finished the hallway with the drywall in the carport but the wall between the master bathroom and dining room still needed drywall. The master bathroom still needed drywall. The fascia and soffits were not repaired.

I asked Christina if we could start today and overjoyed she said of course! That excitement was tempered almost immediately. Christina said how happy she was that the bathroom would get finished and how she wanted her mother to see it done and get to use its privacy. Christina continued to say that that wouldn’t happen now because her mother died on July 4, a week after I last visited her house.

This is why I need you to volunteer every hour you can to this effort.

Day 106 – New Experience

This week we have a good group of youth and adults from First Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, Tennessee. We are fortunate there are some who have experienced construction skills.

We are making a push on a couple of homes to get the work well underway, or completed. Our hiatus begins in August and the next teams return in mid-September, unless some reader(s) want to come down and work with me. You are free to come on down, one or two of us can make a big dent in a lot of small jobs at homes we have worked that have small things like window trim, drywall repair, priming, etc.

I plan to go over to Pearlington on some of the dog days of August to finish some drywall at a couple’s house. They really need the help and I can work at my own pace with the village manager, who also want to see that work done, and one or two of you, if you want to brave summer. You’ll enjoy it. I still haven’t gotten back to Boo, the dog out in the northwest part of the county.

Today the work-site manager went with one team to Pascagoula. Their tasks are tearing out a bathroom and installing a drywall ceiling in a back room that was water damaged, after they remove the old acoustic tile.

I went to D’Iberville with the other group. I had an ulterior motive. We need to rebuild an exterior wall on an addition to a home; it is mostly jalousie windows and two doors. The exterior wall looks pretty bad and we are going to have to replace all or part of it. It is a new challenge for me, I’ve read all about replacing a wall but this is my first time. I feel a little like a child in a candy shop.

We pull off the siding and discover we can salvage the wall, only replacing several vertical beams that are pretty rotten at the base. It looks like we can cut out the lower 18 inches and replace it with a “stub” wall that we will tie into the existing wall. Because there is a lot of water exposure from roof runoff we need to replace the gutters and use pressure treated lumber for the wall.

After twenty minutes into this effort, I’m completely soaked by sweat, shirt and jeans, but within a couple hours I have my materials list and am off to Home Depot. After I buy the pressure treated 2x4’s and am rolling the cart out into the loading area what do I see… A truck with Tennessee tags.

I ask them who they are and find out they are a work crew from the Belleview Baptist Church in Memphis. We spend a few minutes talking and I leave amazed at another distant connection.
Peace and Grace

Day 105 – Three Luxuries

This has been a week of particular luxuries. The first luxury came in the form of an e-mail. The remaining luxuries of this last week came out of happenstance. Because one of our work-site staff members was out of town, I led the Pearlington work teams and spent a lot of time talking with them.

We had a group of about fourteen or so from Old Pine Presbyterian Church in the Philadelphia Presbytery. A smaller group came down from First Presbyterian Church in Pulaski, VA. The Old Pine group arrived on July 4th, so there was no holiday off for me. I made the 35-mile drive over from Gulfport to be there for the orientation and returned to Gulfport. I made this commute each day from that Friday until the following Friday. It was well worth the time.

The Old Pine group worked Saturday and Sunday afternoon and did not let up until Thursday night when they took the evening to go to New Orleans ahead of the flight back home. (The First Church group worked just as hard on another home but had their last day cut short by a family emergency.)

I entreat all our Presbyteries to take on the active role of this presbytery. I am so impressed with how the churches across Pennsylvania have mobilized and made repeated trips down to help the people of Mississippi and Louisiana. 

My First Luxury
JoeB e-mailed me a draft of his sermon of last week. I thoroughly appreciated his words because they were apropos to my experience this week. JoeB talked about Jesus’ preparing to send His twelve closest disciples out on their own to proclaim the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near. JoeB said a careful reading of the Greek may lead one to conclude those words are a commissioning of us all.

My Second Luxury
The second luxury of the week was the complex connections with the volunteers that ended up an echo of earlier experiences. We invite our homeowners to eat dinner with us and participate, if they wish, in our devotional one night each week. This week it was Tuesday.

Towards the end of that evening I related a brief story of how I came to be here in Mississippi. Naturally JoeB and Jodi, our pastors at Northside were mentioned. Afterwards, Jeff Kackley, the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Pulaski, VA approached me to say he didn’t realize who was my home church until I mentioned JoeB and Jodi. He was in seminary with Jodi!

Topping that, one of the people from this church, Michelle, is an intern and a seminary student at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta. She works at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, the church I attended for seven years. We talked about common acquaintances there and new and old staff.

By the way, two weeks earlier another Columbia graduate from Virginia came down with his group. We talked about the homeless situation in Atlanta and the class at Columbia where the professor requires the class to spend a night out on the street with the homeless. (That milieu formed the basis of the interpretation of the musical Godspell we did at Central early one spring.) Michelle tells me that professor has left Columbia. I hope that class experience lives on after him.

Previously I’ve met the parents of a couple who live in my old house in New Kensington, PA. I’ve met many people from the Pittsburgh area who I’ve been able to have great conversations about my time there.

I’m working with a colleague whose home is in Pembroke, Ontario where I stayed last February working for two months.

This coming week we have a group of volunteers from Cleveland, TN. Next week I see many of my dear friends from Northside PC.

The Final Luxury
I‘ve said it before; my experience down here is rewarding, if not also perplexing. Either I am very fortunate to have met the people I have in my life by chance and built a rich set of friends or I'm located in a particularly acute spot to meet so many people whose threads of living have common crossings with mine.

Old Pine Presbyterian Church is an historic church. It was formed in 1766! Debbie McKinley, their pastor is also Moderator of the Presbytery. (The Pulaski Church formed in 1881 is about the age of Northside.)

I spent almost every evening for dinner and devotion in Pearlington. The Old Pine group engaged me many very stimulating conversations and posed challenging questions. Among them were “How do you identify people to help? “ “What is the racial mix of the homeowners that you help?" "How do you decide when to stop?"

I shared my understanding of the process and the challenges of determining who to help, how long to help and to avoid the pratfall of judgment.

I am sure they returned home with a better understanding of the process and difficulties we face. Their questions certainly probed, stimulated and challenged my own ingrained thinking. Each night, I drove back to Gulfport reliving the conversations and thinking more and more about JoeB’s words in his sermon and my role here.

This third luxury, talking for a week with Debbie McKinley and her church family, and with Jeff and his, really made me think in a different way about what I am doing. This week it leaves me elated and uneasy, being aware that I am moving unprepared towards something new. Some times the unease wins out over elation. Then, I realize I’m resisting an invitation.

JoeB’s e-mail came at a good time. Some of the worries of worthiness that Luther and Paul voiced in their own struggles are dogging me, even knowing what "blessed assurance" means. JoeB stated, “Our calling, whether called to roam or called to stay home, is to live and speak the good news of Jesus Christ to those whose paths we cross.“

Amen.