Work in Mississippi is still calling out to me. I’ve gotten a couple calls about questions, and methods, money, etc. I won't tell that they came also during the furlough. What I’m sensing is that work is still getting done due to your willing hearts and helping hands.
When I was moving all my belongings out of my home the week before it closed (a brutal week), I came across several documents I’d saved, things such as the budgetary plan for the PC(USA) mission effort in Mississippi (they have abandoned that plan) and it caused me to think more about what is going on inside the church organization. I said I wouldn't go on about this thing, but what is not happening there is an old story that will not go away without some help.
One of the things about moving out of my home that stimulated this line of thinking was my skinnying down my possessions, giving (well, long term loans) my woodworking tools away, tools I’ve worked several decades to collect and use. I threw away 30 year old notebooks of technical ideas I had wanted to pursue when I had the time in the future.
It was a strange time. But, what do I really need in a small one bedroom apartment when the only time I will have is going to be to read or write coursework?
The absence, or longing for what I gave up really didn’t sink in while I was doing it, it really hasn’t fully yet, but I’m living out of my truck, more or less, and this really reminds me of stories of experiences heard in Pearlington after Katrina when all of most people’s possessions were lost essentially instantly. No one had a home.
Not helping them last week, never helping them again in Gulfport and Pascagoula made me think about Ezekiel, about how the people of Jacob lost everything by simply turning from the covenant.
I think about the wind blowing around 100 Witherspoon St. in Louisville last week during their self-imposed furlough, even imposed on mission workers. The time when the leader ordered everyone to cease helping the poor and needy, to turn off the cell phones out of fear of some legal action by a disgruntled employee, I suppose.
That wind might have sounded like wind rustling dry bones. Can you imagine the sound?
I wonder if the leaders in Louisville are dry bones, spiritually dead. Would Langston Hughes' poem give succor?
Peace
We passed their graves:
The dead men there,
Winners or losers,
Did not care.
In the dark
They could not see
Who had gained
The victory.
It made me think of the retired man whose home we remade. He consistently sent a title of his social security to us as his gift of thanksgiving for our help.
The world is full of hope for you who live and burn with righteous zeal.
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