I struggle so much at times. A blog is so much an intimate sharing of emotion. I'm not the most public person. I'm known to bury my emotions and project a stoicism, after all, I am a man with all the foibles.
I’m a little taken a back by my comments yesterday. But nevertheless, in a sense it reflects the profound roller coaster ride of an existence it is to do this work. I guess part of what I want to show that such of vulnerability you also may not be chary to show.
This brings me to two stories.
Though we are supposed not to take on any more clients in Gulfport, the nature of how we take on clients complicates a managerial dictate as that. I can only estimate using humanly powers how long it will take to get jobs done, and how much it may cost over what was allocated by a grantor. To generate a list of the clients we will complete by the time of our closing is problematic, even if perceived only by me. At the same time we are spinning down, the most solid, trustworthy granting agency, American Red Cross, continues to bring me cases.
I took on another yesterday in spite of our plan to take on no others. I think we may get it mostly done. The house holds four generations, from grandmother to daughter to grand daughter to, I think, great grand daughter. And the Grandma isn’t much older, if not younger, that me, so that tells you something about the”socio-economic situation.”
The house is three blocks off US49. It has nice vinyl siding, some post-Katrina work was done; but one walks in and sees holes in the drywall, a gas line with no heater in the hallway, a grand, or great granddaughter asleep on a recliner. One walks deeper into the small home.
I go into the kitchen, the range hood had fallen off, but so what, there wasn’t any fan motor in it.
I look in the so-called HVAC closet, there is nothing but a blanket nailed across it, with smoke-stained walls suggesting a fire. When the blanket is moved, hoards of roaches run for cover.
I go into the bathroom and see the roaches edging out from behind the mirror over the sink.
I go into the laundry room, the gas water heater looks decrepit. The door to the outside has no lock, she has the washing machine shoved up against it to keep out unwanted folks.
I go into the bedrooms and note bi-fold doors sloppily hung by some previous contractor.
I go outside and walk around to look at the windows. I have to get past an old brown dog on a chain. He shows all the higher level (psychological) desire for a nice pet on the head and scratching his ear but he is so wary and fearful he only shows momentary positive response to my mild and gentle talk before he jumps down from the top of his dog house and responding at the most basic, animal level, really barks hard at me as he tugs on the chain to put distance between us.
I wish I had an twenty or thirty minutes with that dog, it really hurts me to see a dog respond so. It is a sign of emotional neglect when the dog was a puppy. He doesn't deserve it. None of us do.
I make it back to the front porch and notice the Ground Fault Interrupt(GFI) receptacle has signs of scorching. The grandmother shows me all the receptacles in the house that do not work. The electrical system is a hazard.
This is the land of plenty. How have we let this happen?
* * *
Today I went to Pearlington to check on our work plan for next week. The Pittsburghers are here! Yea!! It is so great to see old friends. This is their fifth trip. (I really enjoyed my time in Pittsburgh. My two exceptional sons were born there.)
We had lunch at the Baptist Church today. Rev. Rawls and his wife (99% of the effort) have arranged lunch for visiting volunteers since a few weeks after Katrina, that means 5 lunches per week for four and one-half years, about 1620 meals, more or less as many as a hundred people at a time. We’ve helped, both with the cost and folks to help prepare, but Mrs. Rawls has born most of the burden.
We talked today after lunch about friends coming and going. We talked about how the bonds made over this lunch (as we also worked to rebuild his church building) have formed, about the fact that as people leave each week, we may not see them again before we cross over to the other side, but then hopefully it will be a joyous time!
Perhaps because my last blog entry was so much on my mind, I was moved to comment after today's lunch. I remarked that while Rev. Rawls was so thankful for our help, that he had to know that a little piece of his congregation and the people of Pearlington went back home with each group of volunteers. I mentioned that he should take heart in the fact that that piece was perhaps a glowing ember that burned bright and flared with the zeal of the volunteers who brought their stories back to their congregations. That ember has ignited the heart of the remnant of our ‘frozen chosen,” perhaps being the fire that burns hotly to warm the heart of a new church that emerges and clings to Christ’s teachings.
Amen
Friday, February 27, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Day 332 - Getting Out of The Boat
I've got no answers to my friend kmm's entreaty to eschew seminary over remaining to work in the gulf.
I've gotten acceptance to enter Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond and Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I visited Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta last Thursday-Sunday. I'm getting subtle inquires from several of my previous professional life connections and calls out of the blue to work with them.
I'm struggling with some extremely complex and contradictory issues here in the Gulf.
I'm struggling with how to neatly severe and resolve a lot of financial issues to follow any of these paths.
All this piled onto to me (mostly self-imposed) over the last few weeks. I wrote this blog entry several days ago about the whole thing. I let it sit because I had said some very hard things. I've re-read it and tempered part of it, so here it is...
My friends and readers who are leaning on me, or maybe I should say offering me good advice are so valuable. You may have noted the comment left by one of them in my last post. She entreated me to stay in the Gulf to help our church mission organization - suggested the seminary would be a drudge. I must admit all this tears at me quite a bit. Even my two dear sons, remarkable young men, give me conflicting but loving advice. I'm really on a roller coaster because all this decision making carries long range implications.
I remember not too long ago, I led an interesting Sunday study program titled "You have to get out of the boat to walk on water." The title sounds a little presumptuous doesn't it?
But think about what that title means, ask what does it really say? I think what it says isn't "step off that cliff, God will catch you before you hit the ground" (sound familiar?) but it says "if you really want to do something important for belief you have to put your fears aside, rely on your faith and step out into the world into action."
This leads me to digress. What should the church look like in an age where more people are leaving or dying than are coming in? I'm told the number of people entering most mainline denominations has not really changed much over the last few decades, but the number who are leaving, or have left it behind, is increasing.
Why would this be?
I have a good friend in a fairly dynamic small, but conservative church. She says she has spoken in tongues and while it sounds sort of stretched, I know her and take her seriously. The church she led the music element of worship had no hymnals and used a projector for lyrics, yet they have a vibrant worship service. A presbyterian church of six or so, apparently too embarrassed to keep "presbyterian" in their name changed it to "New Life Community Church" here in Gulfport. It just died.
I see young people come through our villages who seem to have a passion for the kind of justice Jesus and Isaiah and the other prophets talked about (free the captives, care for the widow and the poor, the stranger in your own land). Where are these young people going to from our church?
I see people my age, still breathing but dead in spirit, totally alienated by the fanatical preachings of conservative dogmas, by church goers that condemn people for sinful mistakes and oust them from their sanctuaries, rather than speaking to people's hearts, rather than taking their hand in theirs and saying "we love you," or shedding a tear for the other's misery and estrangement. My God! What have we done to ourselves?
Let me digress a little further. This mission organization in Misssissippi and Louisiana has captured the attention of our church (you), and its leaders. At least that is what I hear. It is certainly what I saw last year in the many people who return, mission trip after mission trip.
There is the presbytery in Arkansas putting together multiple teams so they can adopt a family project and come down every two months until that family is back in a real home again. There is the church member in Virgina and in Minnesota/Wisconsin who decided the work is so important he is organizing a team of 6-12 for April after the January visit. I'm not sure of the reason, but it matters, I call it ZEAL. They care.
This entire concept of actually asking church members to do something with their hands, to actually stoop and lift up the helpless and disadvantaged is a radical change - actually to do something, to touch someone! Do the leaders of the church realize what is happening, what they have created? I wonder if some are fearful they don't know how to lead it. Or control it.
All you that come down to Mississippi or Louisiana or Texas are really engaging a new definition of the Church, you can call it radical or reactionary because it is an abrupt move back to the church's original teachings. How ironic that such a move by a frozen church is defining a "new" theological order for the 21st century! You are making history.
I've been reading a short book by Frederick Buechner, Now and Then. This book is his memoir of vocation on ministry. Buechner states, "To suffer in love for another's suffering is to live life not only at its fullest but at its holiest."
Well, back to my question/dilemma. If I ask, why stay in Mississippi past summer with this organization that is closing villages? What reasons do I find to justify "yes?" The church allowed Gautier to close and made no effort to restart it some where else. The church is letting Gulfport close and making no effort to restart it some where else. What if our lease and temporary use permit in Pearlington expires in October and I see no motion to relocate it, do I expect it to close then? I guess I can help an orderly closure and help set up the operations in Texas where help is needed.
Yet, should we find the means to stay where there is need? If I take you to the Red Cross or any of the remaining relief and advocacy agencies in Mississippi between Gulfport and Pascagoula, you find scores of families, who have financial shortfalls for funds to get back into their homes, some have funds, or materials, but no labor. Many face eviction from their MEMA cottages in March. These are people who have waited patiently since 2005.
Do we leave them for the dishonest contractors?
Or perhaps I take you to Hancock County where Pearlington sits and talk to the advocacy and relief groups over there. You'll find a lot of families in the same boat. Even more you may find our church seemingly thinking of marching in lock step with the cities of Waveland and Bay St. Louis in Hancock County by pulling out. Those cities seek actively to prevent these homeowners from buying the cottages and placing them on their lots permanently even though the state says this is permissible. We, our church, may help create that disaster passively by inaction. The frozen chosen are we. We do this while our President has ordered a reassessment of the efforts for recovery in the Gulf.
But all the tears and blood serve no useful purpose without helping hands. The number of voluneeers has dropped signifiantly. Where are you? In Gulfport,we have a full house in March and a few in January, February and April, last year we had a continuing stream of volunteers.
What if there were an outcry and outpouring of volunteers who say "We shall not be so blind to the call for help. The church WILL serve the disadvantaged, the poor, those who cry out in need!" We shall be the "Church that Stayed!"
But maybe I'm too much the idealist...
Here is the other side of the coin.
Much of our decision making in the church, candidly speaking, seems to arise from advice of an inflexible older order that fears to risk job and position to stand against culture. It carries much irony that the advice comes mostly from older men who have long ago let the fires of youthful rebellion against such thinking expire, who have grown entirely too comfortable with their scotch and wine and mountain retreats or beach houses - men who have become the hyocrites they condemned in their youth. What did Groucho say? "I resemble that remark!"
The need for help Down in Mississippi is too remote from most person's experience. Most of us do not understand. We see but are blind. We hear but don't understand.
So...do I stay on here past July or August helping where I can in an organization that shows little evidence of flexibility or timely action and decision making, (and I mean on a historical perspective) or do I seek to become part of this new world order of 21st century theologians working to feed and energize that remnant of the church who still burn with zeal, that dynamo that is not afraid their zeal shows and who believe Christ's charge to our church?
Or let me ask you. Do you care enough about the state of affairs of this church and its dying numbers to do something about it? If you can't volunteer, write a letter.
Ask in your letter how many ministers of word and sacrament of our mission organization are out beating the hustings, literally shedding tears in the pulpit telling our story, meeting the small and large churches, asking for help. Where are they?
Get out of the boat, my friends! Get out of the boat.
So, what does Henry do? I almost think the question is rhetorical, don't you?
But as long as I am here in Mississippi, I will be standing at the gate to the village watching for you to drive in, with work assignment in hand to greet you as a long lost friend. If you go to another village, tell me. I'll come and greet you.
Throw a rock at me and keep me intellectually honest.
Peace and Grace, my friends,
Henry
I've gotten acceptance to enter Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond and Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I visited Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta last Thursday-Sunday. I'm getting subtle inquires from several of my previous professional life connections and calls out of the blue to work with them.
I'm struggling with some extremely complex and contradictory issues here in the Gulf.
I'm struggling with how to neatly severe and resolve a lot of financial issues to follow any of these paths.
All this piled onto to me (mostly self-imposed) over the last few weeks. I wrote this blog entry several days ago about the whole thing. I let it sit because I had said some very hard things. I've re-read it and tempered part of it, so here it is...
My friends and readers who are leaning on me, or maybe I should say offering me good advice are so valuable. You may have noted the comment left by one of them in my last post. She entreated me to stay in the Gulf to help our church mission organization - suggested the seminary would be a drudge. I must admit all this tears at me quite a bit. Even my two dear sons, remarkable young men, give me conflicting but loving advice. I'm really on a roller coaster because all this decision making carries long range implications.
I remember not too long ago, I led an interesting Sunday study program titled "You have to get out of the boat to walk on water." The title sounds a little presumptuous doesn't it?
But think about what that title means, ask what does it really say? I think what it says isn't "step off that cliff, God will catch you before you hit the ground" (sound familiar?) but it says "if you really want to do something important for belief you have to put your fears aside, rely on your faith and step out into the world into action."
This leads me to digress. What should the church look like in an age where more people are leaving or dying than are coming in? I'm told the number of people entering most mainline denominations has not really changed much over the last few decades, but the number who are leaving, or have left it behind, is increasing.
Why would this be?
I have a good friend in a fairly dynamic small, but conservative church. She says she has spoken in tongues and while it sounds sort of stretched, I know her and take her seriously. The church she led the music element of worship had no hymnals and used a projector for lyrics, yet they have a vibrant worship service. A presbyterian church of six or so, apparently too embarrassed to keep "presbyterian" in their name changed it to "New Life Community Church" here in Gulfport. It just died.
I see young people come through our villages who seem to have a passion for the kind of justice Jesus and Isaiah and the other prophets talked about (free the captives, care for the widow and the poor, the stranger in your own land). Where are these young people going to from our church?
I see people my age, still breathing but dead in spirit, totally alienated by the fanatical preachings of conservative dogmas, by church goers that condemn people for sinful mistakes and oust them from their sanctuaries, rather than speaking to people's hearts, rather than taking their hand in theirs and saying "we love you," or shedding a tear for the other's misery and estrangement. My God! What have we done to ourselves?
Let me digress a little further. This mission organization in Misssissippi and Louisiana has captured the attention of our church (you), and its leaders. At least that is what I hear. It is certainly what I saw last year in the many people who return, mission trip after mission trip.
There is the presbytery in Arkansas putting together multiple teams so they can adopt a family project and come down every two months until that family is back in a real home again. There is the church member in Virgina and in Minnesota/Wisconsin who decided the work is so important he is organizing a team of 6-12 for April after the January visit. I'm not sure of the reason, but it matters, I call it ZEAL. They care.
This entire concept of actually asking church members to do something with their hands, to actually stoop and lift up the helpless and disadvantaged is a radical change - actually to do something, to touch someone! Do the leaders of the church realize what is happening, what they have created? I wonder if some are fearful they don't know how to lead it. Or control it.
All you that come down to Mississippi or Louisiana or Texas are really engaging a new definition of the Church, you can call it radical or reactionary because it is an abrupt move back to the church's original teachings. How ironic that such a move by a frozen church is defining a "new" theological order for the 21st century! You are making history.
I've been reading a short book by Frederick Buechner, Now and Then. This book is his memoir of vocation on ministry. Buechner states, "To suffer in love for another's suffering is to live life not only at its fullest but at its holiest."
Well, back to my question/dilemma. If I ask, why stay in Mississippi past summer with this organization that is closing villages? What reasons do I find to justify "yes?" The church allowed Gautier to close and made no effort to restart it some where else. The church is letting Gulfport close and making no effort to restart it some where else. What if our lease and temporary use permit in Pearlington expires in October and I see no motion to relocate it, do I expect it to close then? I guess I can help an orderly closure and help set up the operations in Texas where help is needed.
Yet, should we find the means to stay where there is need? If I take you to the Red Cross or any of the remaining relief and advocacy agencies in Mississippi between Gulfport and Pascagoula, you find scores of families, who have financial shortfalls for funds to get back into their homes, some have funds, or materials, but no labor. Many face eviction from their MEMA cottages in March. These are people who have waited patiently since 2005.
Do we leave them for the dishonest contractors?
Or perhaps I take you to Hancock County where Pearlington sits and talk to the advocacy and relief groups over there. You'll find a lot of families in the same boat. Even more you may find our church seemingly thinking of marching in lock step with the cities of Waveland and Bay St. Louis in Hancock County by pulling out. Those cities seek actively to prevent these homeowners from buying the cottages and placing them on their lots permanently even though the state says this is permissible. We, our church, may help create that disaster passively by inaction. The frozen chosen are we. We do this while our President has ordered a reassessment of the efforts for recovery in the Gulf.
But all the tears and blood serve no useful purpose without helping hands. The number of voluneeers has dropped signifiantly. Where are you? In Gulfport,we have a full house in March and a few in January, February and April, last year we had a continuing stream of volunteers.
What if there were an outcry and outpouring of volunteers who say "We shall not be so blind to the call for help. The church WILL serve the disadvantaged, the poor, those who cry out in need!" We shall be the "Church that Stayed!"
But maybe I'm too much the idealist...
Here is the other side of the coin.
Much of our decision making in the church, candidly speaking, seems to arise from advice of an inflexible older order that fears to risk job and position to stand against culture. It carries much irony that the advice comes mostly from older men who have long ago let the fires of youthful rebellion against such thinking expire, who have grown entirely too comfortable with their scotch and wine and mountain retreats or beach houses - men who have become the hyocrites they condemned in their youth. What did Groucho say? "I resemble that remark!"
The need for help Down in Mississippi is too remote from most person's experience. Most of us do not understand. We see but are blind. We hear but don't understand.
So...do I stay on here past July or August helping where I can in an organization that shows little evidence of flexibility or timely action and decision making, (and I mean on a historical perspective) or do I seek to become part of this new world order of 21st century theologians working to feed and energize that remnant of the church who still burn with zeal, that dynamo that is not afraid their zeal shows and who believe Christ's charge to our church?
Or let me ask you. Do you care enough about the state of affairs of this church and its dying numbers to do something about it? If you can't volunteer, write a letter.
Ask in your letter how many ministers of word and sacrament of our mission organization are out beating the hustings, literally shedding tears in the pulpit telling our story, meeting the small and large churches, asking for help. Where are they?
Get out of the boat, my friends! Get out of the boat.
So, what does Henry do? I almost think the question is rhetorical, don't you?
But as long as I am here in Mississippi, I will be standing at the gate to the village watching for you to drive in, with work assignment in hand to greet you as a long lost friend. If you go to another village, tell me. I'll come and greet you.
Throw a rock at me and keep me intellectually honest.
Peace and Grace, my friends,
Henry
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Day 318 - You've Gotta Walk that Lonesome Valley...
I've been driving back and forth between Orange Grove and Pearlington a lot lately, and also driving all over Gulfport working very hard trying to plan completion of our open cases in Gulfport/Pascagoula or arrange a smooth transition for them when we close the operations the end of April.
I know the background stress has been apparent in my recent writings to some of you readers, but candor is a good thing. (I'm working out at the gym pretty hard, and prayerfully thinking, so rest easy.) My friend Heather has an interesting, relevant reflection today.
I'm taking a long trip tomorrow, traveling to Austin to visit Austin Theological Seminary through the weekend, then next Thursday to Atlanta to visit Columbia Theological Seminary. After that it is going to be a continuous march in Orange Grove as we entertain and direct up to 110 volunteers per week. Amongst all that I have to deal with taxes and financial aid applications.
"Financial aid applications? What do you mean?"
The news came in the mail saturday before Super Bowl from Union Theological Seminary and School of Christian Education in Richmond just as I was leaving for Trinity PC in Fairhope, Alabama. I've been accepted for admission! If With my luck, I'll be accepted at Austin and Columbia and have the difficult quandary to decide.
So, it looks as if a new path opens on this journey.
I know the background stress has been apparent in my recent writings to some of you readers, but candor is a good thing. (I'm working out at the gym pretty hard, and prayerfully thinking, so rest easy.) My friend Heather has an interesting, relevant reflection today.
I'm taking a long trip tomorrow, traveling to Austin to visit Austin Theological Seminary through the weekend, then next Thursday to Atlanta to visit Columbia Theological Seminary. After that it is going to be a continuous march in Orange Grove as we entertain and direct up to 110 volunteers per week. Amongst all that I have to deal with taxes and financial aid applications.
"Financial aid applications? What do you mean?"
The news came in the mail saturday before Super Bowl from Union Theological Seminary and School of Christian Education in Richmond just as I was leaving for Trinity PC in Fairhope, Alabama. I've been accepted for admission! If With my luck, I'll be accepted at Austin and Columbia and have the difficult quandary to decide.
So, it looks as if a new path opens on this journey.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Day 316 - Part Time Passion
When Tom Peters wrote these words in his management development book, Thriving on Chaos, it seems to me that he really hit the nail on the head for what is wrong with a good part of our church and our culture. I wonder if he'd been reading the address to the church of Laodicea in Rev. 3:14 ff?
"Would that you were cold or hot!"
No one can work beyond their limits, at least not for long; but I am saddened when I see so much of an attitude of "take it easy," "don't rock the boat," or deference to a "rule" made on the spot not to help rather than help a person standing before you it has is in need. We have too many folks looking to work well below their limits, folks who may never soar and see how much they can do if they try.
Every person that we fail to help is a heartbreak for me, yet for some, it is just another day at the office. I wonder sometimes, good people that they are, if they know what heartbreak feels like?
Peace
"Would that you were cold or hot!"
No one can work beyond their limits, at least not for long; but I am saddened when I see so much of an attitude of "take it easy," "don't rock the boat," or deference to a "rule" made on the spot not to help rather than help a person standing before you it has is in need. We have too many folks looking to work well below their limits, folks who may never soar and see how much they can do if they try.
Every person that we fail to help is a heartbreak for me, yet for some, it is just another day at the office. I wonder sometimes, good people that they are, if they know what heartbreak feels like?
Peace
Monday, February 9, 2009
Day 315 - Good Day Sunshine
Well today was a mix of good and difficult as usual. One nice thing about this work is you usually get a bit of good to brighten the bit of darkness in the day, sort of a sweet and sour situation.
It was a rushed day though, I had to help get some things straightened out in Texas, help an associate pull together some statistics on cases we've closed for headquarters, had to go by a client's house in Gulfport to pick up some left over materials and get them back to the village, and drive to Pearlington for the above and to pick up paint swatches for a client in Gulfport that got carried to Pearlington by mistake - and then I stopped by the gym to ride the stationary bike for 40 minutes.
I went over to oversee the removal of a roof on the poor woman's home who has ben so seriously taken advantage of in Pearlington. It is a hard problem. It looks like she may file a complaint with the attorney general - maybe that will do something.
I got a call late in the day from a member of the Hancock County Resource Committee. He was asking about a case in Bay Saint Louis that his records indicate we are the work partner. It was late in the day and I didn't recognize the name, it may date back over a year.
It was a compliment for my organization to be called, it takes a while to build confidence in this local community.
Also, keep our friend Jeremy in your prayers as he struggles with an illness.
Grace and Peace.
It was a rushed day though, I had to help get some things straightened out in Texas, help an associate pull together some statistics on cases we've closed for headquarters, had to go by a client's house in Gulfport to pick up some left over materials and get them back to the village, and drive to Pearlington for the above and to pick up paint swatches for a client in Gulfport that got carried to Pearlington by mistake - and then I stopped by the gym to ride the stationary bike for 40 minutes.
I went over to oversee the removal of a roof on the poor woman's home who has ben so seriously taken advantage of in Pearlington. It is a hard problem. It looks like she may file a complaint with the attorney general - maybe that will do something.
I got a call late in the day from a member of the Hancock County Resource Committee. He was asking about a case in Bay Saint Louis that his records indicate we are the work partner. It was late in the day and I didn't recognize the name, it may date back over a year.
It was a compliment for my organization to be called, it takes a while to build confidence in this local community.
Also, keep our friend Jeremy in your prayers as he struggles with an illness.
Grace and Peace.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Day 314 - Sheep and Goats
There is a lot of change in the air.
Thomas Paine once said "these are times that try men's souls." Here is a little more of his statement entitled "Crisis:"
"December 23, 1776
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; "
His is a comment about service to one's country but it applies more so to service to one's God.
Texas
I spent the middle of last week in Texas City, helping that village on the First Presbyterian Church's grounds get prepared for their first set of volunteers last Friday. There were a few snafu's but Mike, the work site manager and Doug the village manager are doing fine getting it going and pulled it off.
We got a quick drive around the back bay area of Galveston. There are a lot of very wealthy people on the island and it looks like those homes are already done. I got some good photographs of the remaining damage away from those nice neighborhoods. As is usual, there seems to be a lot of folks on the other side of the tracks, and in Texas City's backyard, that need help.
We will accomplish good things there.
Mississippi
One can feel the seesaw tilting. Our church headquarters announced they are closing on the end of April the eastern-most village in Mississippi, Orange Grove in Gulfport. Orange Grove has a lot of clients and client-in-waiting and is the only Village still helping people as far east as Pascagoula. We have hung in there for a while and are now pretty well organized. It is the headquarters village.
I am told the reason is that the church on whose grounds the village stands is closing and the Presbytery who holds title to the property wants to sell it. I haven't heard whether or not anyone asked the Presbytery if an alternative to closing the village is in the cards or pursued an alternative with any seriousness. In this steadily decaying economy sometimes a quick sale is a nice dream. There is also some minor issues about temporary land use permits but I am pretty sure these could be resolved quickly.
Of course you all are not volunteering like you used to either and you are the ones that make this whole mission work.
Most of the other aid agencies, Red Cross, Lutherans, Methodists and most ngo's are low or out of money and are about to close up leaving us as one of the only life lines, for a couple months. I can't get over a church turning its back on people are asking for help especially since there is a high likelihood that more funds are coming into the Mississippi area for home owners.
Now it will be up to the honest and dishonest contractors to get those. It will be embarrassing to see these funds come in and not have a presence among the wolves.
They also are closing our office in Gulfport and, I think, moving to New Orleans. One of the staff members wants to move to the New Orleans area anyway so I guess that one is elated. There is no doubt a lot of work in the New Orleans area. And besides, it is closer to the airport...
One of the wags remarked as justification of these closings that you can't help everyone, all disengagements are messy...
The first part is probably true (remember my observation on Matthew 26:6-13 on Day 290?). Planning and compassion and commitment to our covenant of stewardship obviates the last part of that wag's statement. It looks to me like we have some holding the lanterns who fear getting dirty and challenging culture.
Again, remember volunteers to make our relief effort successful.
Mary's Burden
At the same time such things as these transpire, good things happen that show that there are still fine sheep in the world whose willingness to help is an example for all of us.
Two great fellows from the Arkansas Presbytery visited today. They want to establish a continuous start-to-finish relationship with homeowners in order to facilitate a faster completion and to have themselves a sense of closure of their efforts.
We spent the day driving to home owners from Saucier to Pearlington. They finally settled on a woman's home in Waveland. Hers is challenging enough, her need is great, and the technical demands for repair meets the skill level of the anticipated volunteers.
The client is Mary. She's a single working mother who owns the property free and clear with four children, teenagers from 14 to 17 and little boys from 3 to 5. She has a common story, her home was pretty much soaked by Katrina's surge in Waveland. She got lump sum FEMA money but spent it unwisely and now is in a bind. She was nine months pregnant when Katrina hit and gave birth to her youngest a week after the hurricane. Her children can't live with her until her house is repaired.
She's living in a MEMA (Mississippi Emergency Management Agency) cottage that is supposed to be repossessed the middle of this month. Waveland will not let people place modular homes on residential property even though the state has ruled such is legal as long as the foundation requirement is met. (City governments can be so compassionate.) Her only alternative is to move up to the Kiln, five or ten miles north up in the back county, or into a subsidized rent apartment.
We will make a difference for her.
Arkansas hopes to have her home done by the end of this year. This client will be one of our last homeowners in Mississippi helped by us if things go the way they seem to be heading.
Pogo, an opossum created by Walt Kelly, a famous cartoonist in the mid-1900's, once opined, "We have met the enemy and he is us." He also said "Even the whitest doves have have feet of clay. " Both phrases remind us of how close we walk to folly.
Please pray for a few more groups like this one from Arkansas, courage in our church leaders, ourselves, and Heaven's proper price to fight the Tyranny of Hell, lest we all take Grace too lightly.
Grace and Peace
Thomas Paine once said "these are times that try men's souls." Here is a little more of his statement entitled "Crisis:"
"December 23, 1776
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; "
His is a comment about service to one's country but it applies more so to service to one's God.
Texas
I spent the middle of last week in Texas City, helping that village on the First Presbyterian Church's grounds get prepared for their first set of volunteers last Friday. There were a few snafu's but Mike, the work site manager and Doug the village manager are doing fine getting it going and pulled it off.
We got a quick drive around the back bay area of Galveston. There are a lot of very wealthy people on the island and it looks like those homes are already done. I got some good photographs of the remaining damage away from those nice neighborhoods. As is usual, there seems to be a lot of folks on the other side of the tracks, and in Texas City's backyard, that need help.
We will accomplish good things there.
Mississippi
One can feel the seesaw tilting. Our church headquarters announced they are closing on the end of April the eastern-most village in Mississippi, Orange Grove in Gulfport. Orange Grove has a lot of clients and client-in-waiting and is the only Village still helping people as far east as Pascagoula. We have hung in there for a while and are now pretty well organized. It is the headquarters village.
I am told the reason is that the church on whose grounds the village stands is closing and the Presbytery who holds title to the property wants to sell it. I haven't heard whether or not anyone asked the Presbytery if an alternative to closing the village is in the cards or pursued an alternative with any seriousness. In this steadily decaying economy sometimes a quick sale is a nice dream. There is also some minor issues about temporary land use permits but I am pretty sure these could be resolved quickly.
Of course you all are not volunteering like you used to either and you are the ones that make this whole mission work.
Most of the other aid agencies, Red Cross, Lutherans, Methodists and most ngo's are low or out of money and are about to close up leaving us as one of the only life lines, for a couple months. I can't get over a church turning its back on people are asking for help especially since there is a high likelihood that more funds are coming into the Mississippi area for home owners.
Now it will be up to the honest and dishonest contractors to get those. It will be embarrassing to see these funds come in and not have a presence among the wolves.
They also are closing our office in Gulfport and, I think, moving to New Orleans. One of the staff members wants to move to the New Orleans area anyway so I guess that one is elated. There is no doubt a lot of work in the New Orleans area. And besides, it is closer to the airport...
One of the wags remarked as justification of these closings that you can't help everyone, all disengagements are messy...
The first part is probably true (remember my observation on Matthew 26:6-13 on Day 290?). Planning and compassion and commitment to our covenant of stewardship obviates the last part of that wag's statement. It looks to me like we have some holding the lanterns who fear getting dirty and challenging culture.
Again, remember volunteers to make our relief effort successful.
Mary's Burden
At the same time such things as these transpire, good things happen that show that there are still fine sheep in the world whose willingness to help is an example for all of us.
Two great fellows from the Arkansas Presbytery visited today. They want to establish a continuous start-to-finish relationship with homeowners in order to facilitate a faster completion and to have themselves a sense of closure of their efforts.
We spent the day driving to home owners from Saucier to Pearlington. They finally settled on a woman's home in Waveland. Hers is challenging enough, her need is great, and the technical demands for repair meets the skill level of the anticipated volunteers.
The client is Mary. She's a single working mother who owns the property free and clear with four children, teenagers from 14 to 17 and little boys from 3 to 5. She has a common story, her home was pretty much soaked by Katrina's surge in Waveland. She got lump sum FEMA money but spent it unwisely and now is in a bind. She was nine months pregnant when Katrina hit and gave birth to her youngest a week after the hurricane. Her children can't live with her until her house is repaired.
She's living in a MEMA (Mississippi Emergency Management Agency) cottage that is supposed to be repossessed the middle of this month. Waveland will not let people place modular homes on residential property even though the state has ruled such is legal as long as the foundation requirement is met. (City governments can be so compassionate.) Her only alternative is to move up to the Kiln, five or ten miles north up in the back county, or into a subsidized rent apartment.
We will make a difference for her.
Arkansas hopes to have her home done by the end of this year. This client will be one of our last homeowners in Mississippi helped by us if things go the way they seem to be heading.
Pogo, an opossum created by Walt Kelly, a famous cartoonist in the mid-1900's, once opined, "We have met the enemy and he is us." He also said "Even the whitest doves have have feet of clay. " Both phrases remind us of how close we walk to folly.
Please pray for a few more groups like this one from Arkansas, courage in our church leaders, ourselves, and Heaven's proper price to fight the Tyranny of Hell, lest we all take Grace too lightly.
Grace and Peace
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Day 308 - It's Not Too Late, Brothers and Sisters
This is my sermon preached at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Fairhope, Alabama, Feb. 1 at their two services.
The lectionary readings are:
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Mark 1:21-28
I am humbled by the invitation to speak at your worship hour about our mission activity in The Gulf related to Katrina and Rita recovery and I hope I do you justice. I always tell people at my church who ask me to speak that they should know I am neither a minister of word and sacrament nor a particularly qualified man to talk about virtue, being a flawed person myself – and certainly not a prophet. However, I do have a story to tell you.
“It’s not too late, Brother!”
I took these words from an old movie named “On the Beach.” The genre of the movie is what we call post-apocalyptic, occurring in 1968 after a nuclear war set off world-wide destruction by radiation sickness. They are from an abandoned street preacher’s sign.
A US nuclear sub sitting on the bottom of the ocean during the short war was spared and on a quest searching for any life in the northern hemisphere. It surfaced in the bay at San Francisco and the exploration party found this sign tumbling along with litter on a wind-blown street.
As the director of that movie knew, “It’s not too late, Brother,” rings familiar and carries an underlying sense of immediacy or urgency.
Context is everything. Were these words shouted by a street preacher in Mobile, or in Chattanooga, or in San Francisco, we would probably dismiss the preacher as deranged. But the words might also hearken to the voices of the prophets that Moses and The Lord discussed that day that we read about in Deuteronomy; that is, the words of prophets that admonished the people to turn from their foolish ways before The Lord brings ruin to them.
We hear those words of God in the opening chapter of Isaiah spoken to the Israelites in their temples, “Why do you trample my courts, I am sick of your burnt offerings, your sacrifices and your holidays. I cannot endue your inequities. When you ask for help I will hide my eyes. Make yourselves clean, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.”
We hear them in graphic allusions in Jeremiah, quoting The Lord; “I remember the devotion of your youth… What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went so far from me?... I still will contend with you… Return faithless Israel, I am merciful! If you swear “as The Lord Lives” in truth, in justice and in uprighteousness… then the nations will bless themselves in him…Circumcise your heart to the Lord lest my wrath go out like fire and burn with none to quench it.” God demands absolute fealty.
And so we have this chorus of prophets ringing in our ears, in our subconscious much like the Hebrews must have had in the synagogue in Capernaum during that first sermon of Jesus, the greatest prophet that Mark describes. These religious Hebrews would have been acutely aware of Isaiah and Jeramiah as these prophets were deeply ingrained in their common experience and suppression by Rome.
Did you notice anything unusual about Mark’s recounting of Jesus’ sermon? Mark simply says, “...Immediately on the Sabbath, Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. “
What sermon? Mark didn’t even write it down! Mark simply says, “The people were astonished at his teaching because he taught as one with authority.”
Mark seems far less interested in telling us exactly what Jesus preached than ensuring we get the message with urgency that Jesus’ authority rests on the prophets. One could conclude Mark is saying if you want to know what Jesus preached in Capernaum, go read Matthew, Luke or John, but be sure you heed his word immediately for he is the great prophet.
Now there may be a clue about the mood of the listeners in the word “astonished.” Some commentators feel this word carries a sense of outrage. The listeners were outraged at what Jesus said. It wouldn’t be the first time; the Israelites in anger had killed prophets for their prophesies.
I wonder what sermon Jesus preached. Did Jesus preach to them “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord shall enter heaven, but (only) he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven?” Did he talk about separating the sheep, those who helped the poor and widow and by extension him; from the goats, those who did not help the poor and widow and by extension not him?
Or did he quote Isaiah to them as he often did in Matthew, “You shall indeed hear but not understand, you shall indeed see but never perceive... for this people’s heart has grown dull. Many prophets longed to see what you see and did not see it, and hear what you hear and did not here it.”
The only thing we knowis what Mark tells us: “ immediately (there is that word again), a man with an unclean spirit appears and cries out “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? I know you are ‘The holy One of God.’”
I an inclined to think that whatever Jesus preached, this prophesy of Isaiah - that we will see and hear but not immediately understand - weighed heavy in the air; because the crowd does not appear to have understood that the possessed man called Jesus, “The Holy One of God.” Even after Jesus casts out the demons and the congregants hear the demons’ words, do they understand or does the crowd only sees Jesus casting out the unclean spirits?
I think some did understand because Mark says the people were amazed and at once (or immediately) his fame spread everywhere. While “astounded” may carry a sense of outrage, “amazed” carries a sense of positive impression. Note that Mark says Jesus’ fame spread at once, so surely there was some positive understanding by the people.
We ought to note that Mark uses the word “immediately” very often, 31 times in 15 chapters, more than ‘faith,” “hope” and “love.” Can’t we conclude that Mark’s Gospel carries a message of Jesus’ authority that demands immediate action? It is almost as if Mark is telegraphing the significance of the end of Jesus’ ministry from the first words of his Gospel.
And so what we have from Mark is a message that (1) Jesus’ preaching is prophetic, (2) his prophetic message is authoritative, even as a new teaching, and (3) his prophetic message is a call for urgent, immediate action. I think Mark is describing an epiphany among the listeners in the synagogue.
These prophetic words of Isaiah all came home to me as an epiphany a year after Katrina struck the Gulf so hard. It was a year after my pastor had traveled the Gulf in the week after the storm and returned telling stories of bravery and disaster. It was a year that I watched the disaster played out on TV but did not perceive its damage, a year after listening to stories from people who came back but not understanding their plight. Then, for reasons unknown to me, I went down to Pearlington, Mississippi and perceived and understood these things first hand.
I saw people with devastated lives and with unbroken spirits, I saw poor people living, if one can call it that in tiny FEMA trailers.
I saw an elderly man with that characteristic yellow skin of one suffering from terminal cancer laying in a hospital bed situated crosswise in one of those tiny trailers with hardly room to maneuver for the medical supplies, hospital bed and respirator, hoping to see the foundation built for the new home for his diabetic wife and mentally challenged adult children before he died. We wheeled his bed out onto the wooden porch built beside the RV so he could see the raised walls of the house that a church in Chattanooga provided through their Christmas Eve offering. He died a couple days afterwards.
I saw people with partially destroyed houses and no money to repair them because dishonest contractors took the money and did no work, the young divorced mother of three children who perhaps had never had more than a few dollars and had no idea how to manage a FEMA check for $20,000 use it on rent and a car to get to work.
I saw the smile on a woman’s face as we walked out of her house having finished all the drywall and only the painting remained to move in, hearing her words, “God bless you.” I hear those words so many days in my work.
I heard it Friday, from woman who left a message for help on the office answering machine whom I called back. I missed her the first time, got her husband the second time. I missed her call back the third time, but finally reached her on the fourth call. I told her I didn’t know how much we could help her but I’d try to get her to someone who could or our case manager liaison who could. She said, sobbing through tears, “I know you can’t help me but just that you called me back means so much. God Bless you.”
On that my first trip in 2006, upon driving into the parking lot of the camp where I stayed, I understood virtually immediately how high on the hog I lived, I was a Vice President for Research & Development, had helped buy and sell companies, had many friends, had worked with some of the greater people in my field, had professional adulation and pretty much a life with no material want. It was an exquisitely painful awareness to understand how removed these people were from my active compassion and how poorly I had seen it before. I have not been the same since. I see the same reaction in so many volunteers who come to our villages.
It isn’t all happy stories. Late last fall, I got a call from an agency whose clients we help. I went out to visit a woman towards Bay Saint Louis who is ill and has some serious problems with depression. I came to a dilapidated mobile home sitting in her yard. It is in such bad shape I wasn’t sure which side to try for the door. Finally I knocked on a side and she appeared in a window and motioned me to the right door. I find out she has COPD (chronic pulmonary obstructive disease) and has a ventilator on the coffee table.
In a raspy voice she asks me, “Please Mr. Paris, please fix my floor. She shows me a mushy spot in her kitchen floor. And then she tells me she has no heat, and yes, when I look at the heating ducts in the floor throughout the home I can see directly to the ground. All she has are three electric space heaters, one of the major causes of fires in mobile homes.
She tells me she bought this mobile home for $7,000 after the original home washed away and paid some contractor $4,000 to half-way fix the kitchen. I’m thinking why did she do it, this home isn’t work more than a few hundred dollars at best? I asked, “Why haven’t you applied for one of the FEMA grants? “
“Oh I have, they gave me $36,000 to replace my home.”
I tell her that’s great, but then she continues, “I bought a mobile home for $20,000 and the guy has never delivered it.”
I asked, “Have you tried to get your money back, or the mobile home delivered?” “Yes.”
“Do you have a receipt so we could go to the police?” “No, I paid cash. I cashed the FEMA check and put all the money in a shoe box. I went down to that man’s business and paid him the twenty thousand for the mobile home out of the box.”
I was grasping at straws by then and doing the math in my head. “You still have about $5,000, Mrs. Jones, and we have to get you in some housing where you have heat and protection. Can’t we sell the property and build or buy elsewhere?”
She begins weeping. “No, I don’t have any left. I gave my son who moved to Baton Rouge about $4,000 for his children and my daughter here in town who has a drug problem. I gave her about $2,000. And besides that before my husband died just a few months before Katrina he changed his will to protect me from some of my relatives selling the property out from under me. He changed the will so the property can’t be sold while I’m alive.”
So here I have a case where I don’t have any answers. She has no money, she lives in a mobile home that should be condemned, she can’t sell the property to use the money to move into assisted living, she is dying of COPD and she is quite mentally troubled and is so objectionable sometimes that few people, even her case manager, want to help her.
I have similar stories of families; some with better prospects for help some with less. Over three years after Katrina, many people still wait and hope. They live from Pascagoula to Pearlington, Mississippi. They live from New Orleans to Houma, Louisiana. And now after Ike, the live in cities like Port Arthur and Texas City, Texas. They are widows, single mothers, people with jobs who are trying to rebuild with their own money but have no time or energy after 12 or 16 hour shifts. These are the people Jesus would say are the downtrodden, the needy, and the alien, right in our backyards.
Now more than ever they need our help because the funding agencies are running out of money. The Presbyterian Church has told us we are closing all but one of our villages in Mississippi this May.
Your help is needed for us to get as many of these families into their homes as we can. Perhaps you could “adopt” one family and work with them to see them from now until they get into their home? Perhaps you could come over on one trip before May, just help one family. Perhaps by the grace of God we can do a miracle and help them all.
It’s not too late to open our eyes and perceive, to listen and understand, to circumcise our hearts to The Lord lest His wrath go out like fire and burn with none to quench it.”
It’s not too late, brothers and sisters to acknowledge by action what we are given by grace. Jesus is calling us to the narrow gate.
Amen
Benediction
As you go out into the World today, go with the assurance that we are forgiven and redeemed solely by God’s Grace through a love that is often unrequited. As we go out to Fairhope, to Mobile, to Mississippi and to anywhere else in the world, let the World know we are Christians by our Love.
The lectionary readings are:
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Mark 1:21-28
I am humbled by the invitation to speak at your worship hour about our mission activity in The Gulf related to Katrina and Rita recovery and I hope I do you justice. I always tell people at my church who ask me to speak that they should know I am neither a minister of word and sacrament nor a particularly qualified man to talk about virtue, being a flawed person myself – and certainly not a prophet. However, I do have a story to tell you.
“It’s not too late, Brother!”
I took these words from an old movie named “On the Beach.” The genre of the movie is what we call post-apocalyptic, occurring in 1968 after a nuclear war set off world-wide destruction by radiation sickness. They are from an abandoned street preacher’s sign.
A US nuclear sub sitting on the bottom of the ocean during the short war was spared and on a quest searching for any life in the northern hemisphere. It surfaced in the bay at San Francisco and the exploration party found this sign tumbling along with litter on a wind-blown street.
As the director of that movie knew, “It’s not too late, Brother,” rings familiar and carries an underlying sense of immediacy or urgency.
Context is everything. Were these words shouted by a street preacher in Mobile, or in Chattanooga, or in San Francisco, we would probably dismiss the preacher as deranged. But the words might also hearken to the voices of the prophets that Moses and The Lord discussed that day that we read about in Deuteronomy; that is, the words of prophets that admonished the people to turn from their foolish ways before The Lord brings ruin to them.
We hear those words of God in the opening chapter of Isaiah spoken to the Israelites in their temples, “Why do you trample my courts, I am sick of your burnt offerings, your sacrifices and your holidays. I cannot endue your inequities. When you ask for help I will hide my eyes. Make yourselves clean, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.”
We hear them in graphic allusions in Jeremiah, quoting The Lord; “I remember the devotion of your youth… What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went so far from me?... I still will contend with you… Return faithless Israel, I am merciful! If you swear “as The Lord Lives” in truth, in justice and in uprighteousness… then the nations will bless themselves in him…Circumcise your heart to the Lord lest my wrath go out like fire and burn with none to quench it.” God demands absolute fealty.
And so we have this chorus of prophets ringing in our ears, in our subconscious much like the Hebrews must have had in the synagogue in Capernaum during that first sermon of Jesus, the greatest prophet that Mark describes. These religious Hebrews would have been acutely aware of Isaiah and Jeramiah as these prophets were deeply ingrained in their common experience and suppression by Rome.
Did you notice anything unusual about Mark’s recounting of Jesus’ sermon? Mark simply says, “...Immediately on the Sabbath, Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. “
What sermon? Mark didn’t even write it down! Mark simply says, “The people were astonished at his teaching because he taught as one with authority.”
Mark seems far less interested in telling us exactly what Jesus preached than ensuring we get the message with urgency that Jesus’ authority rests on the prophets. One could conclude Mark is saying if you want to know what Jesus preached in Capernaum, go read Matthew, Luke or John, but be sure you heed his word immediately for he is the great prophet.
Now there may be a clue about the mood of the listeners in the word “astonished.” Some commentators feel this word carries a sense of outrage. The listeners were outraged at what Jesus said. It wouldn’t be the first time; the Israelites in anger had killed prophets for their prophesies.
I wonder what sermon Jesus preached. Did Jesus preach to them “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord shall enter heaven, but (only) he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven?” Did he talk about separating the sheep, those who helped the poor and widow and by extension him; from the goats, those who did not help the poor and widow and by extension not him?
Or did he quote Isaiah to them as he often did in Matthew, “You shall indeed hear but not understand, you shall indeed see but never perceive... for this people’s heart has grown dull. Many prophets longed to see what you see and did not see it, and hear what you hear and did not here it.”
The only thing we knowis what Mark tells us: “ immediately (there is that word again), a man with an unclean spirit appears and cries out “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? I know you are ‘The holy One of God.’”
I an inclined to think that whatever Jesus preached, this prophesy of Isaiah - that we will see and hear but not immediately understand - weighed heavy in the air; because the crowd does not appear to have understood that the possessed man called Jesus, “The Holy One of God.” Even after Jesus casts out the demons and the congregants hear the demons’ words, do they understand or does the crowd only sees Jesus casting out the unclean spirits?
I think some did understand because Mark says the people were amazed and at once (or immediately) his fame spread everywhere. While “astounded” may carry a sense of outrage, “amazed” carries a sense of positive impression. Note that Mark says Jesus’ fame spread at once, so surely there was some positive understanding by the people.
We ought to note that Mark uses the word “immediately” very often, 31 times in 15 chapters, more than ‘faith,” “hope” and “love.” Can’t we conclude that Mark’s Gospel carries a message of Jesus’ authority that demands immediate action? It is almost as if Mark is telegraphing the significance of the end of Jesus’ ministry from the first words of his Gospel.
And so what we have from Mark is a message that (1) Jesus’ preaching is prophetic, (2) his prophetic message is authoritative, even as a new teaching, and (3) his prophetic message is a call for urgent, immediate action. I think Mark is describing an epiphany among the listeners in the synagogue.
These prophetic words of Isaiah all came home to me as an epiphany a year after Katrina struck the Gulf so hard. It was a year after my pastor had traveled the Gulf in the week after the storm and returned telling stories of bravery and disaster. It was a year that I watched the disaster played out on TV but did not perceive its damage, a year after listening to stories from people who came back but not understanding their plight. Then, for reasons unknown to me, I went down to Pearlington, Mississippi and perceived and understood these things first hand.
I saw people with devastated lives and with unbroken spirits, I saw poor people living, if one can call it that in tiny FEMA trailers.
I saw an elderly man with that characteristic yellow skin of one suffering from terminal cancer laying in a hospital bed situated crosswise in one of those tiny trailers with hardly room to maneuver for the medical supplies, hospital bed and respirator, hoping to see the foundation built for the new home for his diabetic wife and mentally challenged adult children before he died. We wheeled his bed out onto the wooden porch built beside the RV so he could see the raised walls of the house that a church in Chattanooga provided through their Christmas Eve offering. He died a couple days afterwards.
I saw people with partially destroyed houses and no money to repair them because dishonest contractors took the money and did no work, the young divorced mother of three children who perhaps had never had more than a few dollars and had no idea how to manage a FEMA check for $20,000 use it on rent and a car to get to work.
I saw the smile on a woman’s face as we walked out of her house having finished all the drywall and only the painting remained to move in, hearing her words, “God bless you.” I hear those words so many days in my work.
I heard it Friday, from woman who left a message for help on the office answering machine whom I called back. I missed her the first time, got her husband the second time. I missed her call back the third time, but finally reached her on the fourth call. I told her I didn’t know how much we could help her but I’d try to get her to someone who could or our case manager liaison who could. She said, sobbing through tears, “I know you can’t help me but just that you called me back means so much. God Bless you.”
On that my first trip in 2006, upon driving into the parking lot of the camp where I stayed, I understood virtually immediately how high on the hog I lived, I was a Vice President for Research & Development, had helped buy and sell companies, had many friends, had worked with some of the greater people in my field, had professional adulation and pretty much a life with no material want. It was an exquisitely painful awareness to understand how removed these people were from my active compassion and how poorly I had seen it before. I have not been the same since. I see the same reaction in so many volunteers who come to our villages.
It isn’t all happy stories. Late last fall, I got a call from an agency whose clients we help. I went out to visit a woman towards Bay Saint Louis who is ill and has some serious problems with depression. I came to a dilapidated mobile home sitting in her yard. It is in such bad shape I wasn’t sure which side to try for the door. Finally I knocked on a side and she appeared in a window and motioned me to the right door. I find out she has COPD (chronic pulmonary obstructive disease) and has a ventilator on the coffee table.
In a raspy voice she asks me, “Please Mr. Paris, please fix my floor. She shows me a mushy spot in her kitchen floor. And then she tells me she has no heat, and yes, when I look at the heating ducts in the floor throughout the home I can see directly to the ground. All she has are three electric space heaters, one of the major causes of fires in mobile homes.
She tells me she bought this mobile home for $7,000 after the original home washed away and paid some contractor $4,000 to half-way fix the kitchen. I’m thinking why did she do it, this home isn’t work more than a few hundred dollars at best? I asked, “Why haven’t you applied for one of the FEMA grants? “
“Oh I have, they gave me $36,000 to replace my home.”
I tell her that’s great, but then she continues, “I bought a mobile home for $20,000 and the guy has never delivered it.”
I asked, “Have you tried to get your money back, or the mobile home delivered?” “Yes.”
“Do you have a receipt so we could go to the police?” “No, I paid cash. I cashed the FEMA check and put all the money in a shoe box. I went down to that man’s business and paid him the twenty thousand for the mobile home out of the box.”
I was grasping at straws by then and doing the math in my head. “You still have about $5,000, Mrs. Jones, and we have to get you in some housing where you have heat and protection. Can’t we sell the property and build or buy elsewhere?”
She begins weeping. “No, I don’t have any left. I gave my son who moved to Baton Rouge about $4,000 for his children and my daughter here in town who has a drug problem. I gave her about $2,000. And besides that before my husband died just a few months before Katrina he changed his will to protect me from some of my relatives selling the property out from under me. He changed the will so the property can’t be sold while I’m alive.”
So here I have a case where I don’t have any answers. She has no money, she lives in a mobile home that should be condemned, she can’t sell the property to use the money to move into assisted living, she is dying of COPD and she is quite mentally troubled and is so objectionable sometimes that few people, even her case manager, want to help her.
I have similar stories of families; some with better prospects for help some with less. Over three years after Katrina, many people still wait and hope. They live from Pascagoula to Pearlington, Mississippi. They live from New Orleans to Houma, Louisiana. And now after Ike, the live in cities like Port Arthur and Texas City, Texas. They are widows, single mothers, people with jobs who are trying to rebuild with their own money but have no time or energy after 12 or 16 hour shifts. These are the people Jesus would say are the downtrodden, the needy, and the alien, right in our backyards.
Now more than ever they need our help because the funding agencies are running out of money. The Presbyterian Church has told us we are closing all but one of our villages in Mississippi this May.
Your help is needed for us to get as many of these families into their homes as we can. Perhaps you could “adopt” one family and work with them to see them from now until they get into their home? Perhaps you could come over on one trip before May, just help one family. Perhaps by the grace of God we can do a miracle and help them all.
It’s not too late to open our eyes and perceive, to listen and understand, to circumcise our hearts to The Lord lest His wrath go out like fire and burn with none to quench it.”
It’s not too late, brothers and sisters to acknowledge by action what we are given by grace. Jesus is calling us to the narrow gate.
Amen
Benediction
As you go out into the World today, go with the assurance that we are forgiven and redeemed solely by God’s Grace through a love that is often unrequited. As we go out to Fairhope, to Mobile, to Mississippi and to anywhere else in the world, let the World know we are Christians by our Love.
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