Down in Mississippi

Day 786 Evangelicals – The “E-word”

2010-05-14T18:36:00.006-05:00

I was in a long discussion today in our philosophy/ethics after-hours group, I call it “philo-after hours.”

We meet every other Friday for an hour or so of discussion. Actually it all started the week before when we met to discuss the reaction of some segments of our church to Margaret Miles who gave three highly stimulating, well thought out lectures in the Union PSCE Sprunt Lecture series.

Just so you know, Dr. Miles grew up in a highly conservative and fundamentalist Baptist tradition and is now a member of the Anglican Church. She is retired but has been Dean of the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, CA, and a faculty member at Harvard. She is well read and the author of a number of historical books dealing with the role of women, religion and values in the early church and today.

Dr. Miles wrote a very insightful book that is completely historically founded, well worth reading regardless of where one stands on women and sexuality in the church. To reduce a book to a capsule, always an unfair thing to do, Dr. Miles discussed how up until the late middle ages, Christian art and image represented salvation in the female nursing breast, in particularly Mary’s. The breast (the only method of sustenance of children in that time) carried great import as a symbol of nurture and sustenance, not as a sexual object. For a number of ecclesiastical and societal reasons, the woman’s breast became secularized and turned into an object of erotic interest while the cross became a primary object of significance in Christian imagery.

While some highly opinionated writers in the Layman claim she proposes to substitute the female breast for the cross, this is a complete fabrication of her position. (She also was highly offended to be called a "radical feminist," something I assure you she is not.) She states because of the secularization of the breast and change of culture it is not possible to recover that original symbolic imagery (If you chose to comment I encourage you to be informed first and read her book, “A Complex Delight: The Secularization of the Breast, 1350-1750”). For this book she has been vilified to the extent some of her religious critics, if it were lawful, would be the first to light the bonfire at her burning as a heretic.

In the course of our philo discussion of Dr. Miles book and the negative reaction of the more conservative element of our church, evangelism came up. I had just finished two papers on the nature of the African Brazilian and Asian Christian churches, as well as the growth of Christianity in the slave culture and the mission movements in America in the 1800’s. One thing that stands out in a fair reading of the history of these situations of rapid church growth is the evangelical nature of those churches.

A couple of my colleagues were quite put-off by my mention of Evangelism. They were put-off because I used the “E-word” that carries so much baggage. When I used the word “evangelical” everyone stopped, and the reaction was as if I had farted in the church pew on Sunday morning during the Great Prayer, or as a Caucasian man, used the “N-word” at an NAACP meeting.

I was perplexed but really understood the reason. The word carries so much very negative baggage to some because it is associated, perhaps unfairly, with the mean-spirited part of our church that is usually conservative (not a crime) but so highly opinionated and intent on forcing their beliefs on others that they alienate all but the few who are swayed by their rhetoric. The reaction of my liberal friends to its symbolic meaning to them was ironic, wasn't it.

That discussion started up again this afternoon, leaving a couple of us a “little” inflamed because I maintained we need a more evangelical perspective. We never got past my use of the word "evangelical" to the substance of the discussion because it was so polarizing to some of us. This is my take on the issue.

It is a profoundly bad reading of the New Testament not to conclude our Church was charged from its first days with the task of evangelism of the Word. To deny, delimit or circumscribe its meaning, obligation and practice is ethically and morally flawed. The issue though really lies at the heart of the several problems with our mainline protestant denominations, particularly many in the Presbyterian Church, even the conservative branches.

For some reason, Presbyterians are not comfortable with the idea of evangelism, at least in current times. We go to church, worship, pray, give of our money and abilities but usually do it using the Presbyterian Hymnal (Blue or Red), the organ, a chancel choir and an orderly, emotionless worship service where we sit quietly in the pew listening to the minister’s sermon. You’ve all heard it, the “frozen chosen.” We serve vicariously by supporting some missionaries who tend to adopt our own frozen style in a foreign country, which is not very effective.

Well, we are frozen and most everyone who seeks warmth in the church is looking elsewhere and leaving if they are members. For practical purposes, evangelism is dead in the Presbyterian Church. We are too quick to say defensively, “Oh, we can’t evangelize to an empty stomach. We have to feed them first.”

Yes, we have an obligation to feed the hungry, help the helpless and the prisoner. Yes, they should “know we are Christians by our love.” But the bottom line is, we should be carrying the message of salvation to the world, including next door. We can do it as it is so successfully done in Africa, Asia and South America, an active mission movement that seeds new churches and educates new local pastors. It worked once in America, you know.

The so-called “Evangelical Church” and the Pentecostal Church worldwide is growing by leaps and bounds. In the South (Africa, South America, Asia) it is the primary theological force. Ask the question, “Why is this?”

I propose the reason is that these Southern churches have so greatly succeeded in evangelism is that they have connected the spiritual feeling and emotion of the worshipper to the theological message of transcendent, saving grace. It may be personal testimony of a pastor or layperson to God’s grace in action, it might be things we are very uncomfortable with: guitars and drums, popular melodies and new lyrics, video projectors. It might be vocalization by church members during the sermon, an “Amen!” or “Yes!” or even more, even new words for our traditional beliefs and creeds.

“Oh, but that is all just emotion," one might object, "there is not any rational change in belief, it is all just the emotional pressure of the crowd of witnesses. What about the Apostle’s Creed, or the Westminster Creed? Or the Bible, we have to read their translations very carefully to be sure they don't slip some weird word in into it. But they believe in ancestors... It isn't real Christianity.”

Put-off by the E-word or not, or by new words for our older tradition, I suggest we get used to it and co-opt the word ourselves in our practice of evangelism and stick to the essential tenets of Christian faith. We ought to learn the lessons in the Southern World Church. Particularly we need to understand the Southern Church has “invaded” America. If that invasion serves no other useful purpose than to renew our attention to the great ends of the church, it has done its job. I am in the minority as a Presbyterian, a very small minority.

I am a victim of my past. I butted heads with family members, associates, and many tears over the left and right wing politics and racism of the 60’s, we all ended up bloodied by it. I learned one thing in all that. People do change their minds, not everyone, but enough do. They don’t do it because we beat them with a club. That tends to force people into more dogmatic, refractory positions. Radicalizing does not work well. People change their minds because of personal experience and the freedom of choice to think and do so. But those are not our focus, our focus is the unchurched.

Evangelism is a big word, it means more than just preaching revivals and handing out tracts. It means living a good life and inviting other to follow.

It means taking uncomfortable (for liberals) stands on things like pornography, excessive and improperly used wealth, consumerism at the personal level.

But it also means actually being excited and joyful to be a Christian and having people see and know that fact. That means changing.

It may mean being uncomfortable personally (it will for me!) for the greater good, to change our worship service to bring back the youth and people who left or never stepped foot in our church because it puts them to sleep. It may mean experimenting with worship styles, not just doing it so we can say we did it, but so we are participating. We might even find out we enjoy it.

As I said, my problem is, I am a child of the 60’s and some old memories will not get out of my head. Eldridge Cleaver was a little too far over the top for most when he said if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem but Bob Dylan came close to what faces us today in the lyrics of Times they are a changin’:

“Your old road
is rapidly agin’,
please get out of the new one
if you can’t lend a hand.

I’ve given no recipes. I don’t have any yet, maybe you do. I hope I painted a picture of our evangelical obligation. Christ’s church lives it, so should we.

Peace and Grace

Day 673 - Haiti II, Foreshadowed Danger

2010-01-30T08:09:00.030-06:00

Most of you know the latest on the situation in Haiti itself, but a few ex pats, like Jessi Stit in Malawi, don't seem to get a lot of news so at the end on this entry you'll find an update.

The geologic situation in Hispaniola

[The following information is drawn from an article in Science, volume 327, 22 Jan 2010, p398, (go to www.sciencemag.org), and from USGS sources]

In 1979, a siesmologist named William McCann published a world-wide survey of the regions where there is a highest probablity of rupture of a fault in an earthquake. Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic) was identified as one of them.

The Caraibbean plate (South American side) and the North American plate slide past one another relentlessly at roughly 20 mm per year about a fault that passes through the southern edge of Cuba and along the southern edge of Hispaniola. This fault is much like the San Andreas fault in southen California. Unfortunately for Hispaniola, the two continental plates actually form two parallel faults here, one along the southern edge of the island, the other along the northern edge, pinning Hispaniola in a double grinding East-West twist.

A further misfortune of this double grinding is that it is causes relatively shallow earthquakes that create more physical damage than deep earthquakes. A third misfortune is that Port au Prince, much like Mexico City, is built on sandy sediments that fill a valley rather than on rock. When an earthquake hits, the sandy ground shakes like a bowl of jello. It actually behaves in a fluid-like manner grossly magnifying the shaking effect.

In the period of the 1700's there were major earthquakes along the southern edge of Hispaniola, in fact there was a 6.6 quake in Port au Prince in 1701. On October 18, 1751 a very large quake of 8.0 broke the fault in the southern ocean off shore to the East, the faulting then triggered a 7.5 quake in Haiti to the east of Port au Price, further breaking the fault on November 21. This quake destroyed Port au Prince. Then on June 3, 1770 another 7.5 quake occurred in the Port au Prince area, again destroying the city. In the early 1800's an 8.0 quake occurred on the northern fault in Haiti.

This is often the pattern, a part of the fault breaks and this transfers the stress in the fault to unbroken regions which may then eventually rupture in a domino effect.

In the aftermath of the 1751 quake 30,000 people died of hunger and disease.

As a result of the 1751 and 1770 quakes, at that time Haiti outlawed masonry house construction, allowing only wood construction. This obviously was not continued.

The 1770 earthquake of 7.5 magnitude formed the fault that partially broke this past January. The 1770 quake was five times more powerful than the 2010 quake.

In the past 240 years, the two plates have contined to march past each other at a steady 22 mm/year pace but locked together in Hispaniola and building up more and more unrelieved shearing stress in the Haiti-Cuba fault system. The plates have moved, more or less, 17 feet past each other with no major rupture to relieve the stress.

Dangerous times?

This earthquake on the scale of earthquakes was relatively moderate. Unfortunately, it may well be a precursor to an even larger one. The fault is a sleeping giant. After 250 years, is it turning in its sleep to get more comfortable for a while?

If you are interested in the seismology of the Caribbean, or your own backyard, I encourage you to go to the USGS site . You will see the Virgin Islands to the East are constantly active with small quakes, and appreciate why there is a volcano there.

Update for those expats living in caves:

Right now supplies and equipment appear to coming in at a fast rate. Monetary donations seem high.

The biggest issues look like the inability to move supplies inward from the airport and the absence of tents. Most people are still sleeping in the street, damaged housing or makeshift housing. Food supplies, medicine and water are getting in. There is an effort to move people into the countryside out of the city. Crime (looting) is beginning to increase in Port au Prince.

The seaport itself was heavily damaged but I think it has been repaired enough to take on some deepwater ships again. The roads are either full of debris, people or damaged and they have to use limited amounts of heavy equipment to move things. The injuries and inability to provide immediate health care, and destruction of most medical facilities is still a big issue. Over 100,000 people have been killed and buried in mass graves, or still are rotting in the streets and destroyed buildings. I imagine the toll will go higher.

There are bodies in the ruins and the potential for serious public health issues is great. Compounding this, as you may expect, there are many crushing injuries that require amputation, as well as head trauma. People remain untreated for long periods, leading to infection and gangrene; and the likelihood of poor/doubtful recovery. It was absolutely horrible to see seriously injured people all lined up on blankets lying on the sidewalk or in the courtyard of places where the few medical teams are. They may lay there for several days.

The US military has hospital ships off shore and are trying to meet some of the need.

Authorities are trying to move people out of Port au Prince into the country side to relieve the excessive crowding.

The infrastructure, as I can tell (water supplies, roads, etc) was already in very bad shape and now is basically worthless.

I have described it as if we are watching one of the twin towers collapse helpless to help - but in horribly painful slow motion. So much damage was done and the events have been launched in the area of health that can't be reversed, while we stand and watch holding all the medicine, equipment in our hands to help if we could.

I worry a lot about what will happen in Port au Prince - dysentery, cholera, etc, I may be the pessimist tho. I heard on PBS radio yesterday that the two major pre-existing medical problems in Haiti are tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. The Tuberculosis sanitarium was destroyed; much of the HIV/AIDs vectors were in the prison in town and that was destroyed and all the inmates have fled. People is the countryside who have HIV/AIDs are still managing to get to treatment but I can't speak for Port au Prince, itself. Other than the escaped prisoners, it appears many HIV/AIDS positive people are able to connect with treatment.

I immediately thought about heading down, looking for the right connection, but as I followed what is happening, I came to the realization, with some help from friends, I'd be in the way until I can connect with the right organization and we can get enough physical presence to create space to help. I think very soon it will be time to go though, and am still struggling with whether to take off and help or stay in seminary. Sometimes action is a better form of praying than sitting and studying.

I worry the most about whether this quake is a precursor to an even larger one in the relatvely near future.

Henry

Day 656 - The Text the Lectionary Avoids

2010-01-14T18:14:00.003-06:00

I have resisted falling back onto “sermons” since I’ve been in seminary perhaps because I see the weaknesses in me that I so easily see in others. Nevertheless, the chaos in Haiti begs a connection to a biblical texts.

I think one is a very common text most of us might seize as justification to help Haiti. The other, to my knowledge, has never been part of the lectionary. I am going to be a little unconventional and ask that you review these texts in advance of my next blog entry.

What is unusual you will find when I’m done is how prescient these U.S. Senators were in 1974 when they introduced into the Senate a resolution to declare "a national day of humiliation, fasting and prayer;"
Mark O. Hatfield (R.-Ore.),
Pete V. Domenici (R.-N.M.),
Clifford P. Hansen (R.-Wyo.),
Paul L. Fannin (R.-Ariz.),
Dewey F. Bartlett (R.-Okla.),
Harold E. Hughes (D. -Iowa),
Jennings Randolph (D. -W. Va.),
Lawton Chiles (D.-Fla.),
John C. Stennis (D.-Miss.),
James B. Allen (D. -Ala.), J.
Bennett Johnston (D. - La.),
Sam Nunn (D. –Ga)

Readings:
The Pentateuch: The time of the Judges: Judges 21:25; and The Story of Jephthah’s Vow: Judges 11:1-40
(WARNING: Please be prepared for shock. The Jephthah reading is a loathsome text.)

The Gospel: Luke: 10:25-37 – Who is my neighbor?

If you have access to a good library, you may want to also look for an article by Phyllis Tribble: The Daughter of Jephthah, “Virgin in Gilead,” Chapter 4 in Text of Terror, Fortress Press, Philadephia (1984).

My next blog entry will be my exposition of the significance of these texts relative to not only Haiti, but also most of the interaction of our great country (and our denomination) in the world in the latter part of the 20th century and the early 21st century.

Peace and Grace,
Henry

Day 655 - The Reality on the Ground

2010-01-14T06:48:00.006-06:00

From what I've been able to piece together this appears to be possible or likely near term outcomes in Haiti.

From a social and medical perspective what has happened in Haiti must be considered something like the slow motion collapse of the World Trade Center towers. The triggering event has happened and we are helpless to avoid some bad consequences. Perhpas we can mediate them.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere according to some. It has always been food- and resource poor. 42% or more of the population is under 14 years old. The median age is 18.4 (CIA World Fact Book 2003). Right now these appear the facts:

1. There are thousands of dead - in the streets, inside collapsed building, walking.
2. There are thousands of injured - the majority recceiving little or no medical aid.
3. Many of the injured will die over the next few days.
4. There is a serious or absent clean water supply - epidemics are inevitable.
5. Medical supplies and personnel are virtually non-existent.
6. Apparently the remaining UN forces are the only ":law enforcement."
7. There is little or no food.
8. There appears to be an absence of significant amount of earthmoving equiupment.

This is a probably outcome over the next days and weeks:

1. Continual breakdown of order and increase in violence and civil unrest.
2. Epidemics of dysentery and other water-born diseases.
3. More deaths from disease and violence.

Therre are some mediating actions:

1. The US and other countries are marshalling aid.
2. Samaritans Purse has large capacity water treatment equipment and supplies rady to go upon authoroization to land at the airport. Samaritian's Purse appears in the most active response mode.
3. Search dogs and equipment apparently left from Los Angeles last night.

Observation

It looks to me like it is going to be a very dark time in Haiti, even if, by some miraculous step, our government takes charge and implements the water treatment equipment and medical support. We need to act, but if were travel to Haiti, assuming authorities would let us, we also need to think through logistics and medical strategies.

Remember, President Obama has just asked, or is about to ask, Congress for 700 Billion dollars ($700,000,000,000) for fighting and killing in Iraq and Afganistan, most of that could be used to save lives in Haiti. Likely our military forces are stretched so thin itwill be hard to repond to Haiti without reddeployment.

I have begun contacting aid agencies and personal contacts. I've gotten a couple volunteers already. Contact me here, on my Facebook page or by e-mail andhelp us work out a strategy.

If you think you may go at any time in the next year, immediately contact your physisican and begin hepatitus innoculations.
If and when we go, it is not going to be for the faint-hearted. It will be dangerous and fraught with risk. But what else would Christ have us do but help?

Peace,

Henry

Day 654 - Haiti

2010-01-13T19:51:00.005-06:00

Friends,

I was going to post a blog on some theological issue of intellectual importance; but listening and observing on CNN the chaos in Haiti really reduced my motivation to do that to naught. This is a tragedy, one that may have long-lasting effect. What can we do to shape the outcome. To act now is a noble thing; to sit and watch while people die is a thing we hope to hide in darkness.

The problem there is appears overwhelming, far worse than Katrina. It is not clear what we can do immediately. There is a need for doctors, for medical supplies, for earthmoving equipment, for hands but there is need for compassion, for love, for perhaps nothing more than a hug and demostration of faith. Haiti was destitute, now it is going to be worse. Do not be deluded, it is a dangerous place.

Let's figure out what to do. Send me ideas and volunteers at: hgparis.com .

If PDA wants to let us help, great!, That is where we should start; but we have to rely on them. If it looks too bound up in administrative and procedural worries as we presbyterians are want to be, I'll find a way for those of us who can and are willing to help. There are several faith-based agencies already in motion.

I am ready to drop all I am doing here in Richmond and move to help, let's talk about what we can do. We need French-speaking people, we need selfless people. E-mail me, we will find the way to help.

Grace and peace,

Henry

Day 513 - What was so good about yesterday?

2009-09-12T18:35:00.002-05:00

I'm sure some one might wonder if the experience at the free clinic caused so much angst, what could be good about your day to say it was good?

The goodness about the day was being there and realizing were I to end up working with such a group after completing my seminary work, I'd find my "occupation" again being fun. In other words, my rule has always been, if you wake up smiling and you are heading to do something fun whose other name is "a job," your life are OK. This is one of the reasons I am drawn to people who find it easy to smile (yes I am thinking of Max's mom).

Day 530 – On The Way Home

2009-09-11T20:54:00.002-05:00

Some times the day just goes right, whatever “right” is. Sometimes it all turns about an insignificant thing. The day just jumps up and slaps you across the face. It is all one can say about it, the day went right.

Today was one of those days.

It was our Union service day. It is a day, something I admit with a little embarrassment, I really didn’t know existed even at a national level; a “day of service” to commemorate, or honor, or respect the people who lost their lives on September 11 in New York and Pennsylvania on that ill-fated morning. I heard on the radio that the Muslim world also has a one thousand day service period that ends today for the same reason.

All of us entering students at Union Theological Seminary (as well as a number of second, third year and doctoral students) met at Watt Chapel to situate ourselves in a “Day of Service.” I went with a group of my fellow students to a local “free clinic” not too far away.

I was taken aback by what I heard from the directors of the clinic. (Should I have, given my life in the inner city of Atlanta participating in the life of the congregation of Central Presbyterian Church?) This non-profit serves tens of thousands of clients in a year. It has a significant (numbering in the hundreds) clientele of HIV/AIDS cases they assist. I heard the Director of Medicine at a local university runs a large volunteer (free) practice at the clinic.

We didn’t spend but perhaps four hours there, hardly enough to make an impact except upon our own consciences. We divided into several groups. Some of the lucky of us went out and weeded the little grassy plots of ground (the clinic survives on volunteer donation so they can’t afford grounds keepers). Another group went down and sterilized hypodermic syringes in a valiant effort if not to stop drug use, to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other blood-born diseases such as hepatitis.

Yes, my first reaction was, “Are they suborning drug use?” Then I realized in a fit of rationality, they are in the trenches of the real world. They may slow or stop addiction via this, their counseling and case management outreach, but they can’t stop the immediacy of the present storm of real people walking in off the street strung out on the fangs of addiction, twisted and pulled by rationality to stop and compulsion for that next fix, real people who still have a glimmer of hope to avoid the slow death of AIDS/HIV.

So after they finished the sterilization, they sorted new age condoms, gels and various lubricants and other niceties related to the sexual reality of this world into “safe sex hand-out packs.” One of our party had to excuse themselves because of their discomfort. I have some empathy. It really was an acid feeling in my stomach. I thought especially as a child of the 1960’s, what depth of despair has our world sunk because of our rebellion? We are diminished as a people by this pathos.

My God, what hath we wrought upon ourselves?

We collected ourselves in the basement towards the end of our single half-day day mission and considered a few questions. One question was why do we serve others, these poor people who are literally the dregs of our society?

Many, if not all of us in one way or another, voiced an opinion that mimicked intentionally or not the discourse between Jesus and the lawyer of the Pharisees who asked, “Teacher, what is the great commandment of the Law?” Jesus answers, “You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest commandment. And a second is like it; you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the prophets.” [Matt. 22:34-40]

It is true. All we can do is help anyone we can find the way home, knowing we ourselves will be welcomed at the door when we arrive.

Day 524 - Postmodernity in the 21st Century

2009-09-05T20:49:00.012-05:00

I have been reading the twenty plus books to get a head start for next semester. One of the books on pastoral care delves deeply into “postmodernity” and another also reviews it as a legitimate social criticism(!).

Postmodernity is an ill-defined, politicized concept. Even its proponents and “critics” of the school have found it difficult to provide a measured, operating definition of the term. From my recollection it is a concept the evolved out of the 1960’s student movement, a movement I would characterize at a superficial level by its nihilism and alienation towards our parents’ values and at a deeper level as fear of failing to meet the standard of our parents’ generation.

The generation of these parents was a childhood lived in the Great Depression, an adulthood dealing with the threats to their world in World War II and then the Korean War. It was the generation who finally came home to a world of relative modern comfort living in a cold war under the threat of nuclear destruction.

Some of you may have read one of Joseph Heller’s less appreciated but important novels, Something Happened.¹ This novel captures the essence of the worldview of many of our parents. We are entirely too close to them to see that at least some of them were living in a post-traumatic stress syndrome in reaction to that whirlwind ride from the rural society of the early 1900’s, the unspeakable horror of World War II and the urban sprawl and world threats of their 1950’s and 1960’s society.

In the end, postmodernity may be as much a movement directed against American, and by extension, western values as anything else. While our culture has good reason for criticism, I am in a fair quest of a legitimate definition of postmodernity from its practitioners.

Edward Wimberly seeks to define postmodernity by defining “modernity” and essentially defining postmodernity as its opposite.² He states modernity is characterized by (1) a Cartesian philosophy; (2) capitalism; (3) technology; and (4) science.

He further states these four matters have caused a massive “redefinition” of the mind of the disadvantaged, which has led to a pervasive nihilism that explains the current problems with the predominately African-American population of the inner city. He further states, “[modernity is] a social, theological transformation brought about by technology uprooting beliefs and values." Personally, I do not think the problem can be so narrowly defined as strictly an African-American matter.

In effect, Dr. Wimberly is defining postmodernity as a social movement of Luddites.³ The Luddites were a anti-technology social movement in England in the early 1800’s opposed to automation of textile mills. Dr. Wimberly goes further. He extending the concept to be essentially complete opposition to all elements of western society, a culture that he characterizes as a wasteland peopled by individuals living isolated, unconnected and dismembered lives seeking validation via the cultural norm of possessions.

A favorite word for postmodern critics is “deconstruct.” It is used in the manner that existing "norms" have to be "deconstructed" so they can be "reconstructed," presumably in a more effective"postmodern" form.

Often the comments of the late pop critic Marshall McLuhan on the media and its pervasive influence are used to define the postmodern “view.” One famous widely known quote about television and the media is “the medium is the message.”⁴ (As do many people, I think a lot of what McLuhan said about the media was remarkable prescient. McLuhan maintained every way we communicate is "the medium." In fact, I have to admit a lot of my critical comments benefit from the reality described by McLuhan, “We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”⁵

From all this, I conclude that the postmodernity of these postmodern critics is a nihilistic liberation philosophy upset over virtually every aspect of our modern culture. In my mind postmodernity finds this definition most visible in its view of the arts.

I interpret this in regard to the arts to mean that art is to be reduced to what is accessible to and meaningful to each individual, in essence, “ Every one is an artist.” The natural extension of this idea is that if everyone is an artist there is nothing that is not a work of art⁶, or certainly no place for artistic criticism. Marshall McLuhan put it a bit more humorously when he said, “art is anything you can get away with.”⁷

Another underlying element of postmodernity is the ideal to be “global village, or a culture of living among and with others.” In a sense, this is an idea espoused by the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel.⁸ Marcel strongly believed we exist only in-relationship to others. He defined this as true “being.” Marcel, however much he struggled with the dehumanizing element of technology, would probably roll over in his grave if he were called a postmodern thinker. His thinking was far more sophisticated.

As mentioned earlier, I maintain (and remember) that postmodernity arose out our 1960’s student days when outraged by the draft, Viet Nam, the materialism of our society and the mores placed on us by our parents concerning sex, religion and race, we rebelled against virtually every element of our parents lives, and often choked on the largess they fed to us.

Perhaps standing at the apogee of postmodernity is The S.C.U.M Manifesto⁹ by Valerie Solanas published in 1967. S.C.U.M. stands for Society for Cutting Up Men. Among the gems in this manifesto are two particular points she makes in its beginning:

1. “Life in this society being at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”

2. It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.

Even though she truly believed this miasma (and I intentionally left out her really blunt language), hardly any of us can see this as other than hyperbole drive by an internal struggle with cultural norms. Who burnt their bras? Who was so happy about the technical advance of, and to get that first prescription for birth control pills as a sexually liberating act? Maybe using that technology opened eyes to the real issues of sexual politics imposed on many women.

The sad thing about all this is that even in my textbooks postmodernity is viewed as a legitimate philosophical and theological perspective. In spite of the seemingly romantic element of being a young socialist seeking to deconstruct society, I would suggest that at best the anomie or alienation many of us experienced in the 1960’s and 1970’s was rooted in fear of the draft and the realization that our culture was grossly materialistic and we are part of it, perhaps psychologically in a terrifying fear and guilt that we would fail to achieve the greatness of our parents, or justify their sacrifices, as it was anything else.

We should face the facts. Most of us had a self-interest in being anti-establishmentarians and had little true altruism about it. Forty years later our predicament proves it. Essentially, Richard Nixon ended the "postmodern" movement when he replaced the lottery for the draft. A lot of postmodern thinkers with large lottery numbers suddenly got interested in other things, like getting out of college and finding a job. (My number was 161, I got an induction notice, but that is another story.) Unfortunately in the philosophical and artistic world there is a lot of inertia and they fail to remember McLuhan's assessment that we can only see the present in the past as we motor on looking backwards.⁵

Very few of my hotheaded radical friends from the 60’sand 70’s are living in poverty and fighting culture, most of them drive BMW’s, are presidents of their family companies, or are retired in their summer homes watching their bank balance, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and their stockpile of scotch and fine wines. In a facile argument, postmodern apologists might explain this unseemly retreat circularly that these folks(themselves) are victims of culture, a culture that redefined their values.

There will always be people who for good and bad will become engineers or scientists, human resources people, secretaries and groundskeepers working for companies that seek to build better weapons for war a fat salary. In fact many standing in the pulpit are part of that chorus. Many Christians find it easy to justify war as did the noted theologian, St. Augustine. ^10,11 but the chrous isn't one of unanimity. Sad as it is to admit, social and international struggle, and capitalism probably are a primary engine that drives technology; but that does not mean that motive has to be the true end of mankind.

I think perhaps "postmodern" folks like Dr. Wimberly miss (or conveniently ignore) the bigger picture. We have water purification technology that allows high purity water is almost any place on the globe, vaccines against hepatitis, pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, polio, some cancers and many more. We see HIV/AIDA vaccine on the near horizon - something desperately needed in the African world.

We may want to contemplate technology a little more critically. It provides artificial skin for burn victims, extracts tens of times more gasoline from a barrel of crude oil (yes we need to stop driving so much), CAT scanners, MRI machines, industrial and mechanical engineering that has automated manufacturing to dramatically reduce the cost of goods, the burgeoning growth of standard of living conditions in China, India, Viet Nam, and Mexico that are leading to social revolution.

We may want to contemplate the growth of information technology that is allowing us to understand the code of the human gnome and may allow us in the near future to manipulate cell growth to cause a heart to heal itself from heart attack, or a liver to regenerate, or a body to start producing insulin again. Technology might well allow our children to live active, productive and healthy lives well towards the hypothesized natural lifespan of the human body of about 120 years.

Of course I should mention the media arts and ceramics, artistic disciplines that have benefited quite a bit from technology.

We may be surprised that the percentage of women enrolled in science and engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology is over 20% from 40 women in 1965. We may be surprised that Georgia Tech has an active program to recruit people in the arts and African Americans. At one time if not now, Georgia Tech led the nation in African-American enrollment. I expect these trends only to increase at every university. The doors are open.

* * *

Is this a technology tract I write? Am I wearing rose colored glasses? Hardly.

Will the technology be democratically dispersed, or will certain countries use it first? Almost certainly the latter will occur, but no one should doubt that the technology will diffuse rapidly. Then we will face a true theological crisis as our world rapidly fills up even faster with people draining resources.

Were we to allocate the amount of funds on clean water that we spent in Iraq over the last eight years there might well be no thirsty people, at least for water. That is our American sin.

Does anyone want to bet the innovations and threats to stabilty might well lead to the social and theological pressure that stimulates human exploration of enhanced agriculture, resource preservation, exo-earth migration and who knows what other kind of technical innovation? We may well be at the door step of the true “postmodern" era. It really depends on us.

The reality of technology is that we opened Pandora's Box a couple hundred years ago or more (think about Michelangelo). No one will pack technology away and turn back the clock. It is going to be used and unless we decide to jump in, understand and use it for our common good, we can count on it being used badly as often as well.

The reality of classical "postmodernity' is we outgrew it before it was ever more than an idea struggling for definition. It may well be a movement in search of a cause but it may also be the early voices of whatever future we are running backwards towards as fast as we can.

It is almost certainly true that we are entirely too close to the subject to know what the so-called postmodern world may look like. In my eyes, the current “postmodernity” is a burp in a social evolution driven by technological change wherein, theological and social elements must redefine the paradigm to maintain functional value both to their own belief and to guide an ever increasing technology-oriented culture.

The reality of a "reformed" theology would seem require determining how to apply its worldview to present time not just full of inventions and ethical choices inconceivable in its literal (3,000 year old) view,¹² but of insight and understanding into the nature of consciousness inconceivable in its literal application. Are we to believe the God that made a world wherein such technology can exist did not intend us to learn from it and apply it and change with it?

I owe an honest word in defense of Dr. Wimberly. I do not want you to leave this essay thinking I do not respect and value his ideas (or those important ideas of the newer "reformed" theology). Edward Wimberly is not in that literal camp. He asks some very important questions although his rhetoric works against him.

Any one who doubts the unhealthy preoccupation of our social structure with dehumanizing elements such as pornography, materialism, corporate malfeasance and the loss of the extended family isn’t really being internally honest. I think we fail to recognize the counter-cultural power of theology and of many people asking the right questions to enforce positive change; and we may not acknowledge the very real loss of hope for a positive future if we do not. In the end we shape the world through our human values as long as God continues this "experiment."

Dr. Wimberly is talking about real people in need who are "living on the edge." I suspect most people live along a continuum of internalized worldviews bounded by two edges or extremes. It is easy to define the extremes where few of us actually live. The majority of us live somewhere along the line between them, the hurting live near its extremes.

One extreme is the externally directed person who holds the idea that “I am powerless in the face of society. The world/culture around me, its values, theology and politics delimit me. I cannot succeed because someone else has he power to control me.” Perhaps Michael Jackson comes to mind, or a crack addict.

The other extreme is the internally directed person who holds the idea that “I am powerful.” Nelson Mandela comes to mind but his positivism is redeeming and clearly not seated at the extreme. The “I am powerful” mindset views the world as a plastic thing that “I may shape and mold so as to achieve my objectives. My achievements depend solely on my actions and commitment to them.” It holds onto an idea that there is something of value within us that we are obligated to share with the world. I still advise my sons "be sure you leave the world with more than you took from it." Just be careful not to take the idea too far.

Both extremes have serious theological and practical problems, which is why few of us could survive in the extremes. But from a pastoral care perspective not to understand and not to be able to look through the lens of someone living those extremes calling for help delimits one’s effectiveness as a giver of pastoral care.

When one reads Dr. Wimberly’s book carefully one sees Dr. Wimberly has identified and discussed a very important and legitimate need, the victim-culture of many in the African American lower income groups. However, I point out that the alienation he addresses isn’t specifically racial. Many people are so alienated and live on the edge.

Bibliography

1. Heller, Joseph, Something Happened, Alfred A. Knopf, NY (1974)

2. Wimberly, Edward P., African American Pastoral Care and Counseling, The politics of Oppression and Empowerment, The Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, 2006. See for example pages 131ff.

3. Several good reviews of the Luddite movement are available, see, for example, Sale, Kirkpatrick. Reading, Addison-Wesley Pub. Co, (1996), or review the Wikipedia summary for other citations to begin an examination.

4. McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, MIT Press, Boston,1994 (a republication of the 1964 original)

5. McLuhhan, Marshal, http://thinkexist.com/quotation/the_past_went_that-a-way-when_faced_with_a/152841.html

6. Taylor, Mark. After God, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2007), Chapter 5, p. 216. Also refer to summaries of comments by artist Joseph Beuys.

7. McLuhan, Marshall, http://thinkexist.com/quotation/art_is_anything_you_can_get_away_with/215230.html

8. Gallagher, Kenneth, The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, Fordham University Press, New York (1962). See for example, chapter II.

9. Solanas, Valerie, SCUM Manifesto, AK Press, 1996. (Also available online at http://gos.sbc.edu/s/solanas.html.)

10. Benson, Richard, The Just War Theory: A Traditional Catholic Moral View, Tidings (2006).

11. For a good counter argument to the just war theory see, Brimlow, Robert W., What About Hitler, Brazos Press (2006)

12. A number of resources describe the so-called new "reformed theology" which its holders would call the "old" reformed theology. For a start one is referred to this web site: http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Reformed-Theology/Essays/

Day 520 - The first thing one must admit is failure

2009-09-01T20:47:00.003-05:00

I imagine some of you might be interested in how my seminary education is going. Now that Fall semester looms next week I guess it is time.

This summer was quite the challenge. I got situated in an apartment in late June and began summer language classes right after the 4th of July. Immediately (within two weeks) I came down with hoarseness from the skanky carpet and bad air in the apartment. That played well with my recitation of Hebrew.

Well, packing two semesters of Hebrew into seven weeks was quite a ride. The biggest challenge was learning the vocabulary, about 100 words per week. I managed an "A;" of course, having an exemplary professor helped. The coursework has led me to some very nice software that I hope will assist me in my Old Testament studies this coming academic year.

The language itself is interesting and fairly straightforward. The grammar and syntax is quite simple compared to English.

I find it quite interesting to read passages in the HB (Hebrew Bible) and compare the translation to say, NRSV, side-by-side. I already see a few places where in my opinion the “committee” (sounds too Presbyterian, doesn’t it?) took some rather extravagant liberty with the translation and I’m a novice, yet.

You may not be, but I was aware of the different organization of the "books"of the HB compared to Jerome's (?) version we use in the "Old Testament." A lot of HB "books" were moved around to make the HB read more like an advent of the NT.

I imagine V. Nabokov was correct. The first thing one must acknowledge upon undertaking a translation is failure.

Peace and Grace.
Henry

Day 504 - Disaster Preparedness

2009-08-16T19:35:00.005-05:00

This is a summary of the events, actions and decisions made by PDA staff surrounding Fay, Gustav and Ike; they should illumine a path towards preparedness greatly improved over last year’s experience.

The critical part of the evacuation is the protocol for all personnel to move to Gulfport and proceed with evacuation to Meridian from there.

In late August 2008, two Atlantic tropical storms entered the Caribbean Sea sequentially, Fay and then Gustav. The timing of these storms shows how fast storms can arise, come upon us and the timing we have to react.

Fortunately there were no volunteers in the villages. The results are a lesson for developing a good disaster evacuation plan. Operation headquarters was in Gulfport, MS.

This document summarizes the relatively objective events covering Fay, Gustav and Ike, starting about one week before Gustav hit to several weeks afterwards. The next document will present an accounting of specific management and personnel failures that jeopardized safety and reflect the importance of clear chain of authority, routine preparation for disaster and importance of local relying on local leadership.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

On Wednesday August 20, the National Hurricane Center (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/) was tracking TS Fay heading towards the Southeastern US from the South Atlantic. Tracking suggested it was going to be another Florida storm if it made the coast at all.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Fay wandered around Florida the rest of this week. Finally after dumping ten’s of inches of rain it started a slow amble westward. On Friday the predictions still were uncertain enough to cause concern but it looked like Fay would track well northward and plow across Florida and north Georgia into Tennessee.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

By Saturday, August 23, Fay had slowed to a 45 mph tropical storm and drifted a bit southward. It was almost a 100% certainty she would burn out over Alabama and Mississippi as a bad rainstorm. At this time, the NHC was showing Gustav as a tropical depression in the ocean behind Fay.

Nevertheless, the logistics staff had panicked and everything in sight was moved into sheltered areas or tied down.

Sunday, AUGUST 24, 2008

At this point the weather in Gulfport had picked up a steady gentle breeze and periodically high clouds that Fay spun off as it churned in the Panhandle and went totally north of the Gulf coast. There was some remote chance it would drift southward and give us a lot of rain. It passed overnight with little of no rain, and only substantial wind gusts.

Ominously, the satellite imagery showed the new storm, GUSTAV, might roll over into the Gulf, rather than go northward. The Gulf water is about 85°F and that is plenty hot enough of an engine to rev up a slow moving storm into a dangerous beast. [On August 15, 2009 the Gulf surface temperature is varying between 80-85°F and two tropical storms are approaching the southern Florida coast line.]

No decisions were made as to preparation at this time.

Monday, AUGUST 25, 2008

By Monday, the forward front of GUSTAV was battering Florida. Satellite imagery still suggested it might roll over into the Gulf into the warm 85°F water. At this time the probabilistic track issued by NHC moved over the southern edge of the Florida panhandle or slightly southward out into the Gulf.

Tuesday, AUGUST 26, 2008

The NHC predicted a "very dangerous hurricane" in the Gulf this morning:

"SOME WEAKENING IS SHOWN IN 24 HR DUE TO THE LAND INTERACTION WITH HAITI. THEREAFTER...THE HURRICANE IS FORECAST TO BE OVER EXTREMELY WARM WATERS WITH RELATIVELY LIGHT SHEAR. THE OFFICIAL INTENSITY FORECAST IS INCREASED AND NOW CALLS FOR GUSTAV TO BE A MAJOR HURRICANE IN THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA. IT IS WORTH NOTING THAT BOTH THE GFDL/HWRF FORECAST SHOW AN EVEN STRONGER HURRICANE. MOST INDICATIONS ARE THAT GUSTAV WILL BE AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE IN THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA IN A FEW DAYS. “

The models suggested Gustav may eventually track west (the storm has slid south over the last 2 days) but for now the models are predicting a beeline for Louisiana and Texas.

Wednesday, AUGUST 27, 2008

Tuesday night Gustav slowed down as it crossed Haiti. The expected arrival into the northern Gulf on Sunday has moved to Monday morning. Its arrival may be my birthday present on Tuesday. Some models are suggesting it could be a stronger storm than Katrina but the National Hurricane Center says right now it is as probable it will be a category 1 to category 3 storm.

At this point we have less than one week until predicted impact and preparation for evacuation should be in high gear. No preparations for evacuation have started.

GUSTAV is now an ominous threat. It looks certain that it will become a full-blown hurricane in a day or so. It's killed 11 people in Haiti. All the tracks point towards the Gulf Coast somewhere in a 300-mile wide spread from New Orleans to Florida.

Probabilistic tracks point towards ground zero in Mississippi/Alabama, perhaps east of the current prediction. Currently, the weather map has the centroid aimed right at Pearlington. MS.

In a long-term recovery meeting in Hancock County Wednesday morning we learned the Governor's office may issue a mandatory evacuation announcement Saturday. A friend working in New Orleans for the state says the evacuation announcement may occur there about the same time.

After this meeting, the existing storm plan was implemented by the VVC. Between now and Saturday we will be packing up and securing property and moving it to designated storage locations. We are preparing roughly 48 hours before predicted landfall to drive our vehicles packed with food, water and extra fuel to Meridian, MS, the staging point. This requires a drive up I-59N, an evacuation route that is going run counter-current, all one-way North and will be funneling evacuees from LA and MS.

Thursday AUGUST 28, 2008

Thursday was a busy day. The National Hurricane Center still shows the centroid of models pointing at landfall somewhere along the northern Gulf Coast.

The conditions in the Gulf look favorable for a big storm, probably category 3, but on the NHC discussion they said a category 4 or 5 isn’t out of the question. By later in the day the storm track looks like landfall west of us, not good because the east side of the storm is where the surge is worst.

We are in the midst of preparation to secure villages and evacuate tomorrow (Friday) morning to Meridian (2 days before predicted landfall).

The objective is to secure Orange Grove, Pearlington, Lulling, Olive Tree and Houma.

Securing means taking all moveable materials, chairs, beds, records, computers, etc and placing them in the sea containers stationed at each camp or bringing them with us. Preferably we will move out trailers with the PDA trucks to prevent their destruction. Village computers should be take with us, they are the only record of activity and contain the only historical records. There are no options for remote backup in place.

Securing the villages in two days will require the logistics staff and local village managers to follow an orderly protocol to systematically secure each village. Time will be compressed due to the very late start of preparation for evacuation.

We have extra gasoline in containers stored under our protocol but we find most of it is old and stale. We do not have enough 5 gallon fuel containers to support the expect number of vehicles. Stored gasoline was not preserved with additives.

We also have a significant amount of cash at each village to be used in evacuation. Particularly after a major storm where there is extensive power outages and damage, fuel stations if open, stop taking credit cards and it becomes a cash-only business. This is also true of other stores.

I went to Pearlington to coordinate and help lay out the plan to secure. This entails taking down the common tent, removing all cots and mattresses into the sea container, and placing as much materiel as possible in the sea containers.

I went to the Gulfport operations office to get all the critical papers and electronics into a file cabinet. All paper files were placed in plastic bags, as was all electronic equipment we would not be taking with us. This took from early morning until noon for me to do by myself.

I finished around noon and headed to Pearlington to help take down and secure our village. The work site manager and I took down the walls of the big community tent, boxed up as many meal items, and paper goods and small appliances as we could.

By mid-afternoon we got the power tools in a trailer for evacuation and I had all the chairs and tables broken down and ready for the logistics crew to load into the sea containers. I went and filled all the propane tanks for the camper/trailers. On the way back the radio reported the governor of Mississippi has declared a state of emergency.

I drove back to Gulfport to check on activity there.

Friday AUGUST 29, 2008

By now the governor of Mississippi has declared mandatory evacuation of all people in FEMA housing and in newly constructed homes in the flood zone in Harrison and Hancock counties (basically all the land south of I-10). The governor of Louisiana declared evacuation of all people with disability or poor health. It is only a matter of time before a full evacuation order comes out and then the highways will be plugged with cars.

The National Hurricane Center is still predicting an impact of Gustav on the Gulf Coast with the “consensus” prediction pointing to landfall just west of New Orleans early Tuesday morning. The models are still ambiguous but there is a growing fear on a rapid intensification to a level 3 or higher storm as Gustav passes Cuba. The potential for a severe storm surge from New Orleans eastward is great.

Evacuation activity became bogged down due to insubordination and a good amount of confusion over who was in authority. Key staff members refused to back up the VCC. The logistics staff left for Louisiana to secure the three villages there, and the VCC and local staff focused on Orange Grove, headquarters and Pearlington. The Pearlington Village Manager was in Pennsylvania on a visit to home.

I left Gulfport about 7:15AM in order to meet our Village Coordinator in Pearlington by 8AM. Today we have to complete the job Pearlington Work site manager and I started yesterday – completely disassemble the Pearlington operation (tents) and secure all the equipment.

We boxed up all the paper records and load up several pallets of our bottled water to bring to the Hancock County EOC (Emergency operations center) in Bay St. Louis. We arranged for a local resident we have worked with to monitor the camp and to dispense remaining water if necessary after the storm.

It is likely if the storm is severe there will be significant water damage at the least.

About 9:00AM three of the logistics team came in from Gulfport. They had been securing our village in Lulling yesterday and driven all the way back to Gulfport again leaving the Louisiana work incomplete; rather than proceed to Houma. They arrived in Gulfport about 1AM.

We set them to work removing the cots and mattresses from the pods.

We find we have one large freezer full of food, and a second one about half full and a lot of canned goods in the kitchen. Our plan is to shut down the electricity in the village as a safety precaution. Since the food is going to go bad and we can’t possibly use it all even if we try to take it with us (Trinity Presbyterian Church in Meridian is already prepared to feed us.)

We decide to load up the freezer and carry it to the EOC, they were unbelievably thankful. It will help them if the situation gets really bad and we’ll get the freezers back. Although there was some debate about taking the food with us, the good thing is we’ve built a strong relationship with a very important recovery organization in Hancock County, and we’ve stayed true to Matthew 6:25-33.

Over objections a large truck was rented to fill with water bottles and extra materials in Pearlington we would not really need. This truck was driven to Meridian in the evacuation and neither it nor its contents were used.

Saturday August 30, 2008.

Gustav has slowed delaying the predicted landfall. At 6AM Saturday Gustav is a category 2, a dramatic increase last night and approaching Cuba. We will get a good idea of what is going to happen after the storm passes Cuba. Regardless, protocol says we should be departing as soon as possible.

The only glimmer of hope is that there are some shearing winds that may keep the storm from becoming a great storm. Increasingly, it looks bad for Louisiana right now.

The logistics staff has been driving round trip to LA and back in their effort to secure those villages. It appears much remains to be secured. Their lack of experience with a storm and the feedback from local residents they have with them is creating enough panic to prevent orderly movement.

Volunteer staff members from Louisiana village and Pearlington are instructed to come to Gulfport to help with Orange Grove take down. The order is countermanded wit no notice to the VCC by the Logistics personnel to proceed to Pearlington to help with a local resident’s preparation.

There is great confusion and blatant disregard for the VCC instructions. This is an outgrowth of no advanced dry runs of evacuation/securing drills and a confused chain of command.

Saturday, AUGUST 30, 2008

While the logistics staff has been running back and forth to Louisiana daily, I completely packed the staff office, securing computers or putting them inside plastic bags, putting all files and papers in plastic bags and securing all in metal storage cabinets. Then along with the VCC and some people she hired to help, I spent all day at Orange Grove cleaning up. WE managed to take down Orange Grove by late in the day. We decided to leave the community tent up since the track was still pointing west of here and it is too big for us to take down.

Gustav was growing ever stronger and was now a category 4 with a possibility of category 5.

Late in the day, Louisville finally gives us the go ahead to evacuate. All staff departs Orange Grove no later than this evening taking as many trailers as possible.

The problem is that all the logistics staff and village staff in Louisiana have yet to arrive in Orange Grove where protocol requires we stage departure.

When the Pearlington trailers were move d to Orange Grove last night, we found tires were underinflated and some tires were dangerously dry rotted. Furthermore, when we had all trailers in Gulfport we could not find any of the anti-sway stabilizer bars necessary for safe towing on the interstate. These were not found until months after we returned to Gulfport. As a result speed on the interstate is going to be limited to about 50 mph.

It looks really bad for the west part of the state and Louisiana. I-10 and I-59 are probably going to be bad.

The storm was originally expected by Saturday morning. Evacuation orders have already been given for the areas and we expect the interstate to soon be packed and all lanes running northward. The departure for Meridian is already over two days late according to our protocol. All staff are not at Gulfport yet.

Sunday, AUGUST 31, 2008

We got out of the village late yesterday (Saturday) and faced constant traffic on I-59N. Almost all cars had Louisiana plates and they drove as if they were in fear of their lives. At least people are taking this storm seriously.

We drove our people to Meridian in two convoys, the second leaving thirty minutes after the first. The second didn't leave for almost two more hours after us.

We notified Trinity Presbyterian Church of our departure and received good directions to the church. We stationed the camper trailers in the parking lot and set up a generator. We found numerous short-circuits in the campers, the generator would blow breakers. Power was problematic all night. . This was a result of the absence of routine maintenance. The second convoy ran into heavy traffic on I-59 and did not arrive until 4AM.

The National Hurricane Center is predicting a bad surge and Pearlington has a mandatory evacuation.

At the moment, there is a mandatory evacuation order by the governor for all people south of I-10 in Mississippi. I-59 is down to one lane due to an auto wreck. The governor has declared a 6PM to 6AM curfew for all of Hancock County and the National Guard is going house-to-house notifying people to evacuate. Tropical force winds are expected in Gulfport by midnight. We expect rain in Meridian later this afternoon. Both cloud cover and wind has picked up here.

I-55 and I-59 are now countercurrent flow (all four lanes moving north, no south traffic allowed.) I-10E was closed early this morning at the Alabama state line due to congestion around Mobile; they are moving people north on surface roads.

The Air Force is flying transports out of New Orleans. Buses drive to passenger pick up points, load people on, drive to the airport and up into the aircraft. The aircraft doors close and the plane takes off for Meridian, Jackson or another location. The planes return to New Orleans and repeat this shuttle.

The NHC reports that Gustav is accelerating. They have moved up the impact to tomorrow mid- to late morning. I just looked at the time-lapse satellite loop on the NHC web site, and its current speed is amazing. Although the intensity is fluctuating, they are still predicting a likely category 3 or category 4 storm at landfall and the expectation it may slow down on landfall creating torrential rain. Its speed may be a saving grace. It limits the time for intensification over the warm gulf waters

We are short of flashlights. Driving to downtown Meridian we see piles of sandbags stacked in many storefronts. We went to the Wal-Mart for flashlights and batteries, but the place is packed. The flashlight display is stripped. I hope we went far enough north. Later we find hundreds of batteries in the Logistics Sea Container in Gulfport, but no one had the key or knew its contents other than the logistics staff that were in Louisiana.

Monday, SEPTEMBER 1, 2008 Landfall

We evacuated Mississippi and Louisiana in the nick of time. We brought 7 of our staff from the Gulf and 12 immediate family from Houma.

Here in Meridian inside Trinity Presbyterian Church, on Monday morning at 9AM we get a cell phone call from Houma telling us the logistics staff person has lost their mobile home along with everything; their house, clothes, school supplies, utensils.

The high school about a mile away caught on fire (electrical?) and burned down. The local shrimp processing plant was obliterated and scattered everywhere. Like Pearlington before it, Houma at ground zero was dealt a smashing blow.

We met at 6PM for a telephone conference with our VCC leader who remained in the Gulfport area with emergency personnel. She is a qualified relief person.

We covered protocol and attempted to resolve the problem of countermanding orders. This problem continued until a Louisville staffer had to issue formal protocol that the VCC was in charge.

Tuesday, SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The hurricane has passed Mississippi and the logistics and other staff people are pressing us to rush to get back to the villages before it is safe to do so. .

We have a critical problem, No one in PDA had thought to obtain for everyone emergency relief credentials and it is highly likely if we return to substantial community damage that we may be ordered to leave as protocol now requires these credentials for emergency relief to enter areas.

Furthermore severe tornadoes are still passing through Alabama and Mississippi as remnants of Gustav blow through. We get word Monday night to head back to Gulfport at 8AM Tuesday.

The three-hour trip to Gulfport was harrowing. We ran into a tornado warning around Laurel. The rain was extremely heavy and the sky was darkening very rapidly. We conferenced by cell phone and decided we were ahead of the worst of the weather. We agreed it was more expedient and safer to put more distance between us and Laurel rather than stopping. Wit no sway bars we were lucky no one was injured. We drove through an area outside Laurel, MS where a tornado was present. We finally got into Gulfport about 11:30AM. We worked until about 6PM to get our Village cleaned up.

Wednesday, SEPTEMBER 3, 2008

The next day, Wednesday, at Pearlington we find all the pods have floated out into the swamp behind the village. It appears all but two or three can be retrieved relatively undamaged. The kitchen took about eight or ten inches of water and smells foul. The plywood underlay of the floor is buckling.

At the end of the day, we drove back to Gulfport on the scenic beach route, US90, looking at the yachts and boats that washed up against the seawall beside the road. There is a lot of debris and visible damage but nothing like the situation after Katrina.

Friday, SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

In the space of the last eleven days we have struggled with three hurricanes. Fay gave us a glancing blow, Gustav severely damaged Houma and the Galveston area but we were spared us what should have been a deadly category 5 blow by the forward speed of Gustav after crossing Cuba and the westward track.

Now Ike lurks in the Caribbean moving towards the straight between Florida and Cuba, the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. Everyone in our camps has been in constant motion, packing, evacuating, returning, cleaning and rebuilding and now facing a probable second evacuation for IKE next Wednesday or Thursday.

Saturday AUGUST 6, 2008

We went the eighty miles to Houma. We w ere worried about the curfew from 8PM to 6AM. We leave by 7:30AM. We find at Houma that the large storage tent has collapsed, all the pods are blown away and all the cots and mattresses are scattered about the property. The village will have to be rebuilt.

Sunday, SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In Orange Grove Sunday at 11:30AM after church, we meet and discuss Ike. Ike is a serious storm, fluctuating between a category 4 and category 3 storm. It is wandering due west towards the Florida-Cuba are. The NHC predicts some time between now and Wednesday it is going to take a turn northward. If it enters the Gulf of Mexico it can get out only over land and we look like a good target. Ominously, as I remember it, Ike is on a path very close to Katrina in 2005 one of the worst hurricane on record.

Thursday, SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

Ike is now a category 2 hurricane about 200 or so nautical miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi river, moving west towards Corpus Christi or Galveston, TX. It is a massive category 1 storm with a low pressure at its center that says it should be a transitioning from category 3 to category 4. It is a very unusual and likely dangerous storm.

Ike's wind field is massive, especially on its northern arc, and that means us. We have tropical storm warnings all the way to the Alabama coast.

In Waveland, MS603 is already underwater. The police have it closed.
Then the weather radio reports that there are 20-25 foot seas in the gulf off the Mississippi coast. That's significant.

In Pearlington, I was on the telephone at 10AM looking for a forklift, concrete saw and trenching tool to start trenching for electrical work and reassembling the pods in our Pearlington Village with the village work site manager and an electrician. We had obtained a bid to rewire the village for about $1500.

Saturday, SEPTEMBER 20, 2008

It has been almost three weeks since we began preparing for Gustav. Neither Pearlington nor Houma is anywhere near ready for volunteers next week. We have volunteers coming into Orange Grove (Gulfport) and Olive Tree (New Orleans) Sunday. The next weekend we have volunteers coming into Pearlington and Lulling.

Recovering from the damage of those storms has been time-consuming, emotionally draining and physically exhausting. Most of our staff has worked 6-7 days a week, many of them 9 or 10-hour days for the majority of those three weeks.

In rebuilding Pearlington, we sustained little damage to tools and equipment since we packed out almost all our high-value tools from our two sea containers and filled them with our cots, mattresses, heaters and air conditioners and large dining tent; Gustav flooded the containers with about two feet of water, leaving behind a nice present of mold.

Although it never approached closer than about 200 miles, the surge from IKE undid everything we had done to recover from Gustav. All the pods were back into the swamp. We had to recover those in the same way.

Yesterday we managed to get all our surviving pods back into the rough formation we want thanks to the forklift provided by the graciousness of the Lagniappe Church in Bay Saint Louis. We’ve had to cut trenches in our concrete pad for new wiring. (That concrete pad is the parking lot of the former post office.) The water damaged much of our ground-level electrical wiring at Pearlington. We have dug trenches for electric line and new propane lines.

We discovered extremely dangerous electrical problems with the wiring done when the Pearlington Village was installed on the old US Post Office property after moving north one block due to construction. We found bare splices in wiring in conduits with evidence of gross arcing. We found numerous ground faults. Its was fortunate no volunteer or staff person was electrocuted.

We further find that when the village was moved to this property no conditional use permit was obtained and this caused problems for several months afterwards. The electrical contract has been voided by Logistics and a new contract set at about three times the price.

At this point we have neither electricity nor propane in Pearlington. Our pods and main tent at Houma Village were completely destroyed by Gustav and Ike. Because we were not able to pack out the cots and mattresses, or get them into the sea container on site a large proportion of them were destroyed, as was the big tent. Nothing is yet rebuilt therefore; it is not certain when the village will be able to support volunteers. The Lulling Village on the north side of New Orleans was spared a lot of damage. We lost a couple of pods.

Several of us spent a very hard full day last weekend at Lulling cutting up all the broken trees and limbs with chain saws and dragging the result to the curb. This weekend the Volunteer Village Coordinator and son and friends went back to finish cleanup and painting.

Everyone is exhausted and on edge. This is unbelievably hard work. Some of our staff are not prepared for this sacrifice and the lack of planning and rigor has made this recovery substantially more difficult that necessary.

As of May 2009, there is still no evacuation and recovery protocol ready. The new protocol was requested later winter. There are no persons working for PDA in the Gulf who have had experience with evacuations now.

At this time three tropical storms/hurricanes are present in the Gulf and south Atlantic. The tropical storm is almost on the Florida panhandle. Tropical storm ANA is moving fast, not intensify, and expected to hit the Texas/Louisiana/ Mississippi area about next Friday/Saturday. Bill is predicted to become a major category 4 storm in five days and is aimed at the southeastern Atlantic coast.

Day 482 - Step 2: More Lessons for PDA from the Past

2009-07-25T22:22:00.002-05:00

From time to time I’ve promised you a plain reading of the condition of PDA, here is another chapter. The next blog entry will be a reflection on some of my experiences in seminary this summer.

One very big problem with PDA in the Gulf is its (lack of) organization. This reflects overall on its effectiveness in most arenas. From my experience this is related to the ego of one person who has been involved in the Katrina/Wilma response since the beginning. As I said earlier, the people who blaze the path usually are not the people to lead the army down the path.

Any one who has worked in a technical organization, or for that matter in an effective organization knows the value of documentation. It is as fundamental as breathing. PDA has no effective process documentation.

Here are some gross objective shortcomings of PDA, as late as May 2009:

1. There are no written documents or procedures on how to set up a village in response to a storm in the gulf or elsewhere.

2. There is no written document for evacuating the gulf that benefits form the experiences of evacuation during storms of 2008. In fact I know that revision of the process has been on the plate of the manager in the Gulf for some time yet when the opportunity to draw on the experience of people who went through an evacuation was there, he shirked it.

3. The is no written documentation on how to set up a village in response to a major disaster.

4. The issue of logistics is treated cavalierly. Rather than position or station materials and equipment in specified locations, the local management just auctioned off almost all the tools, equipment and materials purchased for Katrina that could be used in the future in other disasters.

5. There is an absence of continuity of staff. Continuity builds corporate intelligence that is the basis for doing a better job in the future. As best I can tell, beyond the previous financial manager and case manager liaison whose contracts were not renewed after two years, there has been no tenure longer than 1 year (+/-) by any staff member. Except for me, I do not think anyone was requested to write something one would call a “report.” This is probably the greatest failure of leadership.

The consequence of all this is wasted donations, precious money. It costs far more to re-learn the actions required in the future by repeating the mistakes of the past than to rely on an objective, dispassionate real-time assessment and procedure based on past actions.

Why is this happening? The people who could make it happen have no authority and the ones who have authority are impotent, blinded by their inexperience.

Day 475 - Step 1: View of PDA Looking Backwards

2009-07-18T21:10:00.010-05:00

Fountain City and The Blister Sisters

I plan to air a number of observations about the operation of PDA in the Gulf with the idea I earlier described, to ask what should PDA look like as a disaster relief agency to build an improved schema? I also point out that it is very easy to see and criticize flaws after the fact. The existence of, and search for flaws only represents an opportunity to improve - not the shortcomings of any one person. What PDA accomplished, good and bad, reflects the tireless efforts of the early implementers who stepped into the fray when a helping hand was truly needed. I am after "continuous quality improvement."

The following blog entries will be a stream of conscience review of PDA in the Gulf, specifically for Katrina/2005 hurricane relief.

One of the more remarkable consequences of my working with volunteers coming to the Gulf to work with people with damaged homes was the result of a trip by a staff group not associated with PDA.

I knew next to nothing about PDA in 2006 but was well aware of the challenge to the people in the Gulf hit by Katrina. (Read the "Down In Mississippi stories at the bottom of the blog page). I heard via my Presbytery communications about several relief groups going down to the Gulf area in the year after Katrina. I would get a general printed release in our church bulletin describing three or four groups going down. I never heard a word via any in-person communication to our church about exact what PDA was or was doing, except the story by our pastor of his experience.

When I decided to go down to the Gulf to help I linked up with a group from a congregation in the Knoxville area. It tuns out that was the best thing I've ever done.

What was remarkable was the fact these folks had been going down to the Gulf every three months since a couple weeks after Katrina hit, yet they had never been involved directly with PDA. In fact, they tended to avoid the local PDA villages due to some negative interactions.

This group was quite successful in developing relationships with local people through the Pearlington Recovery Center who provided living arrangements and helped identify and schedule work. For three years this worked smoothly.

They are a highly skilled group and found a niche primarily doing drywall. The have invested in tools, other allied equipment and a trailer. They bring down groups of 10 to 20 each time. In all respects they represent an ideal image of Christians providing help for people in need.

I began traveling to the Gulf with them and made about six trips over 18 months. On one of the trips I recruited some members of my own church in Chattanooga. They had less than a positive experience for a number or regrettable reasons.

But rather than just throw up their hands, the women of the group returned to Chattanooga at the end of the trip and energized an informal group of women who were helping people in need around Chattanooga. The group comprised mostly of women (and a man or two) from our church called themselves, "The Blister Sisters."

What is the message PDA might learn from these two groups?

Day 473 - Construction

2009-07-16T21:01:00.006-05:00

I think it is a time for retrospection.

In the next blog entry or two I intend to consider what PDA has done, what it is, and what a new (future) vision might be were we to move it beyond its stumbling, but effective beginnings. The vision begins with the premise that the purpose of PDA is:

1. To be consistent with the tradition of the reformed faith.

2. To be a vehicle to facilitate the action of the church at large to:
a.) operate from the perspective of the sermon on the mount.
b.) facilitate the members of the church at large to provide christian compassion and action by offering a hand up to those who have suffered disaster in person, place or spirit.

I think this vision will build on what PC(USA)/PDA has done. That is, it will be a framework built on recognition of its mistakes and failures; and on the incidental blessings pursuant to its actions.

I proffer the hypothesis its form and implementation will be quite different from its current one, but be a blessing to the church and a move closer to home for us all.

Stay tuned.

Day 471 - The Chief Cause of Blindness

2009-07-14T21:31:00.011-05:00

I hold very few things with certitude. There is one. It is a fundamental fact of my existence in this world that I do know because it is my nature.

I know that every day I will face the dawn and meet my dear friends. I will say, “You can trust me.” I know with certitude that no matter how hard I try to defend the truthfulness of that claim, I am lying.

I will violate that trust in some way.

This failure sits at the heart of the necessity for forgiveness. Yet such breaking of trust is not a justification for not trusting but for seeking forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a release, or justification of untrustworthiness to repeat the same failures time on end ignoring the obligation to seek to improve. The obligation to improve requires that I have my eyes open and recognize my failures.

I will say, I am painfully aware of this failure. In respect for it, I hope to try my best to “stay out of the fields of circumstance” that leads away from the narrow gate and towards failure.

With this prolog, I want to tell you more news of our friends and cohorts of the Gulf PDA effort to aid the recovery from Katrina.

I thought about Black Thursday back in June, of the miserable affair involving Louisville and Gulf managers who participated in the firing of Leslie Fedo. I thought, perhaps I was too hard on these people, perhaps my expectations of behavior is too severe. After all, they are human and prone to the same errors I make. And then, something happened to make me realize they are still wandering in the same field of circumstance wherein they found themselves in June. Are they blind or just enjoying the walk?

Kevin Henry is a good friend and a long-time, loyal PDA staff person in Houma. Many of you know him and have enjoyed his delicious cooking, have helped him with, or watched him repair things at Houma or Fish Camp or Orange Grove. Some of you also know the great burden of chronic illnesses in his family that he carries quietly, and of his remarkable humility. If you have traveled and worked at the PDA camp at Houma, Kevin is one of the persons who connect you to the Blue Bayou.

Our manager in the Gulf fired Kevin last week. As I understand it, the manager is in the same field of circumstance that he walked into previously with his eyes open.

It seems Kevin contracted a severe case of poison ivy at work while cutting the grass at Houma and had to stay out a couple or three days. He continued to submit his per diem. The per diem, paid out of PDA funds is about $40/day. I am told by my friends there that this was used as the pretense to fire him.

Oh, they also were not happy that he was driving his truck home. It seems our banker-manager in Louisville has decided the tax implication is too messy to deal with, volunteer staff need to move, buy their own car, ride a bike or walk to work, I guess. So let’s toss that on the pile of rationalizations as well. I know that the manager who fired Kevin used a PDA trailer to move from Orange Grove to New Orleans, I guess that personal use of a vehicle was ok. Or, maybe he didn’t see the parallel.

This Gulf manager who is responsible for this termination is paid maybe $60,000 or more from our PDA funds. I have no idea of the salary of the banker/manager in Louisville who is accountable for the HR issues, but I’m willing to surmise she lives comfortably, or to many of us, luxuriously in a large five figure, maybe more, atmosphere.

Isn’t it ironic that the people who are paid the least usually have the greater positive impact on operations and those paid so well have the more negative impact?

Of course Kevin could have sought worker’s compensation, I imagine. In other PDA cases of on-the-job injury that I know, the work site manager at Pearlington for example, PDA covered all the medical bills rather than file worker’s compensation claims. So much for the good man, Kevin – or corporate memory.

But getting back to Black Thursday, after all, I do know these staffers who are involved in this matter; and have met or worked with them. I find it as hard to think they, or I, have questionable motivation or sincerity.

I do know that they have only been to the Gulf a few times, or have recently come to work there in the last year after all the experienced people had left. I also know from observation that they have little appreciation and knowledge of how the mission actually works on the ground, or even what the reality of need is there. After almost four years of work, there is almost no written process documentation to use to set up new villages or to know what negative things happened to avoid them in the future.

We could do a constructive self-comparison by using UMCOR as a metric to see how we stack up but would we want to know the answer?

The longer I think about the predicament of these managers the more I come to the realization that while mismanagement is an immediate problem; an underlying problem is at work. It lies at the heart of what the church is about. It is the problem of not effecting service by personal example. In one context it is called servant leadership. (This also is the heart of good management, by the way for those with a secular view.)

There is an old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Let’s replace that unpleasant word “corrupts” and use “blinds” to be more civil. In my intensive Hebrew class we often times take a respite for a few minutes and talk about matters of faith and belief. We opined briefly about the moral spectrum of David (the king) one day. (I guess by happenstance my comment also applies to the governor of South Carolina who called on the life of David as a justification for his behavior.)

David was anointed to a great task and responsibility. It was a task of service to the Nation of Israel, actually to God. As with all good things, he started with great promise and heroic deeds but soon the power of his office overcame his vision of service and the office of privilege became his perspective on the world as it sank shamefully into murder, adultery and excess.

Perhaps that story remains as a sentinel for us. For what other purpose has a leader but to serve faithfully those who he (or she) leads? When service, not privilege, is foremost in one’s mind, so is probably humility, compassion, peace and justice.

One could argue it isn’t power but is greed, or vanity, but the argument begs the question. All three lead down to a very hard field. Once one steps over the line into this field and begins to think of leadership in the church as a job of privilege, all good is lost. One becomes no better than a hireling, or at worst, than a despot. (As some of my minister-friends know, a hireling has a free pass, no responsibility for the ends suffered by the sheep placed in his or her charge.)

I’m sure none of these PDA managers believe they are doing things wrong, are hirelings, or are doing a disservice to other people who are in service with them. In fact, I imagine they think they really haven’t done anything particularly wrong at all in these matters. After all, these people that have been dismissed are simply employees - they don’t even have the status or tenure of “real” employees.

I am sure that in some other place these people of management may have done good, but now they have obviously wandered into a “field of circumstance,” where exit, if an exit exists at all, can only be painful.

I was reminded that the chief cause of blindness is what we have already seen (or done). It is a painful thing to realize how privilege inures one to compassion, peace and just action. Compassion, Peace and Justice, does that sound familiar?

So, my good friends at PDA, my readers, and me, when Compassion, Peace and Justice come to mind, please think about the difference between privilege and service; and act accordingly. We aren’t a corporation. We are, ab initio, a church sitting on a hill.

Peace and Grace,

Day 464 - Home

2009-07-07T20:40:00.002-05:00

A quote from an unknown source:

You are not home.
There is a home.
Anything leading home is a blessing.

Day 463 - In The Light of Morning

2009-07-06T05:58:00.006-05:00

The light of this morning reveals a narrow door standing open before me. As I step through it in about an hour and a half, my past becomes a remembered presence. Contemplating with a little unease the challenges before me, the realization dawns that the word “return” has an uncertain meaning.

Day 460 - Black Thursday Reprise

2009-07-03T08:15:00.004-05:00

Black Thursday needs a reflection from old history.

So, the two-way message for the prudent one among us is to recognize what people who negotiate with you expect of you.

Remember, life among people is mostly a negotiated process so live and learn.

(note: for the full text of this post. contact me.)

Day 438 – Black Thursday

2009-06-11T22:43:00.020-05:00

Normally a critic of the church would say the actions of its members reflects upon the church. However, For its members, especially in our church wherein its members select its leaders, the actions of our leaders reflect upon each of us. We are called to stand against culture, not strive to participate in its seduction by being a part of it. The spiritual cost to suborn bad behavior with silence, rather than call it into question, is too great.

Peace and Grace

(note: A full text of this post can be obtained by contacting me.)

Day 431 - Wandering here and there

2009-06-04T17:37:00.006-05:00

I've been back in Chattanooga several weeks now, the shell shock of selling my home is past. The anticipation and challenges of Union Presbyterian Seminary, both financial and financial are growing larger.

The absence of all my friends down in Mississippi weighs heavy, but I know they are still there. It is frustrating that so much remains to be done, but it will get done.

About this blog; I plan to add entries to it from time to time as I have worthwhile things to add, so stay tuned.

I am starting a new blog with a slightly different focus, the name isn't clearly established, nor its full structure. Facebook leaves me a little wanting, it's a little too ad hoc which leaves something lacking but the interactive part is really important.

I have an idea about interactive conversations that I've played around with for several years in the technical domain. It actually began before Wikipedia and was almost the identical concept but my colleagues in my technical discipline couldn't envision such a thing taking off and I was prety busy with other matters...

As I say, stay tuned, my phone and e-mail work.

Henry
.

Day 425 -Lingering Reflections

2009-05-29T08:22:00.010-05:00

We had a big spring rain this year and the Pearl River ran quite high. Here is one of the locals enjoying a stroll at the boat ramp. All you see here beyond the tern is reflection of the sky and telephone pole.

The rising water always threatens the village because a small swamp is just behind the shower trailer. The water made it up onto the concrete before subsiding.

Sorry the exposure is a little off; here is a remnant of Katrina about a block from the Pearl River. The stump has been here all this time.

Many of us heard there was a plan to bring in water to Pearlington since before Katrina. I imagine this fire hydrant is a good background for my good bye to Pearlington, 2009.

I've said it over and over, much damage remains to be repaired. In Gulfport near the Waffle House on US 90 I came across these flowers sprouting out of concrete pad where a building once stood.

Across the street, I find an oak that didn't survive.

Bye, Jessi.

What will I find on my return?

Peace

Day 423 - The Long Good Bye

2009-05-27T21:58:00.003-05:00

My plan for my last day in Gulfport with PDA is to leave my keys, credit cards and client information in Gulfport with Leslie very early Saturday morning so I can get to Chattanooga before too late in the evening. It is a six hour forty minute drive, so with the one hour loss in time I need to leave by 9AM or so to get there by 3:30PM, early enough to plan for the evening. The drive is familiar enough by now that II know within ten minutes or so when I’ll get to my house.

Fortunately I started packing up the trailer on Tuesday, not Thursday. I am amazed at what I managed to drag down here to Gulfport over the last year. Quite early I realize there is almost more than a full truckload to bring back.

Since the only thing going on in Gulfport is taking down the village, most of my time has been spent in Pearlington this week, making every effort to get a few things settled with Mrs. Alice, Mr. Terry and Mary.

These are three cases have a special interest to me. I followed them, and made sure the critical things get completed. Mrs. Alice and her husband may face a mid-June eviction from their MEMA trailer, we have just completed redoing her porch, I managed to convince the Mennonites to do that, plus re-roof the house, bless them.

My good friends from Fountain City came down and almost completed the drywall; they have no idea how grateful I am for that. Crews in Pearlington, from Canada and California have been finishing the drywall, painting and laying flooring. I think Jessi will get the crews to complete that in time. A lot after the last week in May depends on the focus of the temporary work site manager – they are not going to replace me. Will he form the connections to the people?

I have managed to pull together enough donated funds to get the re-wiring started on Mary’s home. Now we depend on the Arkansas Presbytery to finish that home by next fall.

Mr. Terry is a problem, he has very serious structural problems, problems too big for me to tackle, I know more or less how to fix it but the risk is pretty great. Jacking a house up that already is on 13 foot piers and replacing girders is a big job. Terry is obsessed with moving in ahead before fixing them. He feels the pressure from MEMA.

It is one of my more painful decisions, do I go ahead and get the interior items with the donated funds before the structural problem is corrected ?– knowing I’m leaving in a few days and probably no one there will be as forceful with him as I am. I fear for him when the next big blow comes from the Gulf.

My good office mates want to have a ”going away” get-together, but I have been sleeping in Pearlington, working on these homes and have not yet to really taken the time to just suit back and enjoy Jimmy Lamey’s company. Time runs through my hands like grains of sand.

I call Jimmy on Tuesday.

“Jimmy, you said if I wanted to have a party at your place to just say the word. Is that offer still on for this weekend?”

“Henry, sure it is, but this is Mother’s Day weekend, you know. I have plans for Sunday.”

“That should work ok, Jimmy, I was kind of hoping we could have a little get together with my friends and yours Friday evening. I was thinking that I could pick up some shrimp over in Waveland and we could have a shrimp boil and just enjoy some time together.”

“How many do you think would come?”

“Well, I‘d call Larry, and guess there might be maybe eight or nine plus you and your family. I’ll pick up the shrimp and beverages.”

“Henry, there isn’t any need to do that, I drive by the shrimp stand coming home from work every day, I’ll pick it up. Robin can pick up the other stuff.”

“I do not want you spending your money on it, you keep the receipts and I’m paying you for it. How much shrimp do you think we need, ten pounds or so?”

“Yeah, that ought to be about right. Like I said, I’ll ask Robin to pick up the rest of the stuff and get it going when I get home from work.”

“What time?”

“About 3:3PM or 4:0PM.”

“OK, I’ll get my stuff done and get over about them to help.”

Then I start thinking about how I‘m going to do all this. Mr. Terry has enough donated funds to get his kitchen cabinets and bath sinks. I had planned to buy all this stuff with him on Wednesday but he went to the doctor and is feeling pretty bad.

“Henry, I am so sore I can’t leave the house. Can we meet at Lowe’s Thursday and pick up the cabinets? “

“Terry, let’s do I early, OK?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll call you when leave Gulfport Thursday morning, that gives you time to drive over to Waveland to meet me.”

We meet a Lowe’s and sort through all he needs. We find everything until we get to the double sink for the bath vanity and find out they are out of stock and there is no plan to reorder. Crud.

I ask the floor clerk, “Do you think one of the other stores might have one in stock?”

He gets on the computer and finds out there is one left in Gulfport.

If I drive back early Friday, I can pick it up and then deliver it to his house Friday afternoon. I have to be in Gulfport Friday noon anyway. My office buddies have planned a lunch for me. They are already a little hurt I planned my own going away party Friday evening, even though I invited them all.

Time is getting really tight. In the midst of all this I finally reach Larry who is working on some property near Hattiesburg and invite him.

I also have to make another run to Lowe’s to pick up gutters and some other materials for Mrs. Alice. It looks like I’ll be spending Thursday evening in Pearlington. How am going to get back to Gulfport, go to the luncheon, drop by Lowe’s and pick up the sink, get ready for the party and also pack and leave on schedule Saturday morning? I’m going to take care of Mrs. Alice, Mary and Terry; everything else is going to wait.

Driving back from Gulfport Thursday evening, I realize the moon is almost full. It I eerie, I’m driving down MS604 with the almost full moon shining the way. I immediately think about driving in from Picayune in November, 2006 on my first trip when the moon was near the same phase. Friday night, it will be the day before the full moon,

I check the calendar. Just like my first arrival in November 2006, my trip to Pearlington for the going away will be the day before the full moon. I’m inclined to fall back on my college days and say “Far out!”

On Friday I do nothing but work all day, trying my best to get every last detail tied up so can get to Jimmy’s on time. We had a great luncheon in Gulfport at noon. Afterwards I pick up the sink and drop by the package store to pick up some beverages.

I hurry to get back to Pearlington, but I’m late. I get to Jimmy’s about 5:15PM. Jimmy has these humongous shrimp, 10-12 count per pound. They are absolutely beautiful. Plus Robin has picked out garlic, potatoes, brussel sprouts, corn and all the rest. I’m a little worried no one will show. No one is there yet but Jimmy and Robin and their two daughters. I call Jessi to see what is going on. She tells me they will be there about 7.

About 6:45 Jimmy, his daughter Julia and I are talking about the bayou.

“We ought to go to on bayou down towards the Gulf. I can’t keep Dr. Bob from Fountain City satisfied. He wants to go out every time watching the birds.”

“You know Jimmy, I’ve never been out on the bayou with you in all this time.”

So Jimmy, Julia and I get into Jimmy’s nice aluminum bateau and head down the bayou.

Jimmy’s place is at the head of an arm of the bayou. As we motor down we have to run through some shallows, some thick grass and dodge a few snags before we get out into the bayou proper. I took my camera, I’ll post some pictures.

The sun hasn’t set yet but it is so low I the sky it bothers the eyes. We pass several houses; Jimmy tells me their history from Karina. We are passing trough all the marshes, I see a little side trail that runs up to a partly rebuilt dock, but mostly it is miles of swamp grass, birds, and the wind blowing in my face, sitting there shoulder to shoulder with Julia. I just miss seeing a couple of alligators. I turn to look in the direction of Julia’s pointing just as a fairly big one makes a quick roll and dives under the surface at the sound and presence of our boat.

We go down past the new bridge on US90 in White’s Bayou and go on to within about a quarter mile of the mouth of the Pearl River. Jimmy says we ought to come back late with a floodlight and look for gators. It is getting late and we figure by the time we get back to the house it will be past time to put the shrimp on. The almost full moon is rising off to the east giving us plenty of light.

Sure enough by the time we pull up to the dock, I see Frank and Mark standing by the cooler, and Jessi and Neal sitting at the table talking to Robin. Larry has shown up and even Jimmy’s friend Tommy Joe and his wife.

We get the shrimp going and soon there is pile of it poured out on the table and we are all eating to our hearts’ content. I sit there nursing a beverage listening to the conversation and watching people. The though strikes me, we need Lizzie, where is the karaoke?

About nine o’clock the talk turns to the bayou again.

“Do you want to go back and look for alligators?”

“Sure!” I say.

So Jessi, Mark, Jimmy and I climb back in the boat. The water I about a foot lower, the tide is running out. With a good bit more effort we negotiate the shallows and get out on the bayou. Jessi has the spotlight and she is finding a lot of frogs but no gators.

“The white spot are frogs. Look for little bright red spots, that is the gators. The light blinds them and they freeze.”

We go down just about as far as before but don’t see anything big. Jessi finally tires holding the spotlight and hands it to me as we turn back. I scan well out from of the boat along the marsh edge and we start to pick up the little red eyes. When we pass a little inlet off the main bayou I shine the light up the edge ohe marsh and the eyes look like a Christmas tree in the water. We motor up and find many small gators, fledglings, maybe 6-12 inches long. There is a big gator around her somewhere but all we see are the fry. We almost run over a three foot one, probably cruising for a dinner of his cousins.

We finally turn back towards home. The almost full moon lights our way as we cover the last few hundred yards, only this time it isn’t MD604.

A thought passes my mind, I think about the new fire hydrants on 604. Who would have thought we ever see it. As we near the dock I hear conversation and see people on the deck sitting around the fireplace. The party has started in full. Someone is showing one of our PDA staff the watermark on Jimmy’s barn. They didn’t realize this place was under about ten feet or more of water, or that the folks from Fountain City rebuilt the house (without a liability release), or that I spent a Memorial Day in the sweltering, buggy heat with them re-roofing Jimmy’s house. As I said, Jimmy and Robin are family.

So much has happened in a year, I’ve learned an awful lot about many things and suffered some real disappointment with the decisions and choices of the person in PDA who made it possible. I’m grateful but saddened by his pride.

Even so, my ties here are strong. There are good people here who have unwittingly opened the eyes of hundreds of Presbyterians. They have made us a greater people than we were.

It still sure seems like home to me.

Thinking about the moonrise, earlier in the evening, I wonder, when will I get back again?

Peace and Grace

Day 422 -Dry Bones

2009-05-26T21:32:00.004-05:00

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.

Day 407 – Days of Rest

2009-05-11T20:49:00.003-05:00

I'm on vacation, ha! Not only vacation but a fast running week headed towards a walk through by the buyers of my home Sunday afternoon.

The impact of this move started getting to me as I began cleaning out my woodworking studio. I looked at that pile of cherry and walnut with a few boards of maple and quite a few quarter sawn oak boards. There are the boards I had sawn and planed for a bathroom table-sink sitting on my work bench, a gift, an unrequited one at that. I started thinking about when, if ever, I'd get back to woodworking again. The import and implication of this choice is really unsettling now.

Last night I learned a few Hebrew letters, aelph, beh, gimmel, dalet, hey. I ran through several pages printing the letters out. It's really hard to go from alphabet to words. It's fascinating though. No articles, all capital letters. Words are not written like they are supposed to be with the funny symbolic annotatios because Hebrew readers know the meaning in context.

Then I received an e-mail from Pearlington about one of our dear clients and a call about one of the work site staff who has an "inexplicable" charge on his credit card. It turned out we had bought two handicapped shower stall inserts for a couple of clients in Gulfport and he'd lost his receipts.

One of the clients is blind. I was at his house when we removed his tub. Someone had installed a "jacuzzi tub" but hadn't leveled it properly or connected the electrical hook up to the pump properly.

I knocked at the door. No answer. After a while I got a call from the work site manager - he said go on in, the client had just gotten back from dialysis and was resting, he knows we are coming.

I hesitantly opened the door and heard his voice, "Is that the PDA people? If you are come on in."

"Yes that's who we are," I replied as i opened the door and edged in. He was lying on the bed, obviously very tired.

"You'll have to forgive me for not getting up. That dialysis really takes it out of me. I've got to rest a while, you all just go on in."

"Ok Mr. Jefferson, I'll just take a look at the bathroom."

"Just don't move anything in the bdroom, ok?"

It was awkward trying to work and not disturb Mr. Jefferson. As we pulled out the shower, we found a lot of water had leaked behind the tub since the contractor hadn't leveled the tub so it wouldn't rock; and he had just run a line of caulk along the bath-wall line. The first time someone stepped in the tub that seal broke. The result? A lot of mold in the wall behind the tub.

We had to tape a plastic sheet over the the bathroom door so all the mold we scraped didn't get into the bedroom. It was hard because we had to pass through the bedroom to get out of the house. We managed it, then treated the wall with bleach.

The next day we came back. After knocking, Mr. Jefffeson hailed us in. He was on his hands and knees feeling round underneath the bed for his shoes.

He reached under the bed and pulled out a leather dress shoe, "This isn't it. "

"Can I help?" I asked.

"No, I'm trying to find my other white tennis shoe. It is supposed to be here under the bed." He leaned over and reached further under the bed.

About that time a horn honked out in the driveway.

"Oh that's my taxi. He's supposed to take me to work. I'vegot to find that other shoe."

At a knock at the door, Mr. Jefferson says,"Come on in, Ralph."

Ralph, the taxi driver asked, "Are you ready?"

"No, not yet. Just a minute until I find that shoe."

I start looking under the bed. I can see a couple of atheletic shoes but none of them match the one in Mr. Jefferson's hand. It isn't there. I look in the closet behind him. Mr Jefferson sits in the floor feeling a couple more shoes, shaking his head negatively.

"I know that shoe is here, someone must have moved it.

"Mr. Jeffeson, I don't see the match in the closet or under the bed."

"Well, I'll just use another pair. Do you see the match for this one?" he asks as he holds up another shoe.

"Yes, I see it behind you in the door to the closet."

He leans over and rubs his hand on the carpet until he touches it."

"Great! I'll be there in a minute Ralph."

"Take your time," Ralph replies.

In a few minutes Mr. Jefferson walks out of the bedroom unaided to the taxi and heads to work.

We finish our work, priming the wood with a strong primer and carefully take all our stuffed trash bags out to the driveway. Now all we have to do is wait on that special order shower insert to show up.

I wonder, are we doing any better job finding our way with our work in Mississippi than Mr. Jefferson is with his? We see but do not perceive.

Day 406 – Compassion and Change

2009-05-10T07:36:00.008-05:00

I’ve been in Pearlington much of all the week before last and again last week. Driving back and forth to Gulfport isn’t much fun, it is pretty much a ghost town.

There are only four people left around Orange Grove. Two of them are dismantling the village, one doing the last odd jobs on clients’ homes and the last our village manager who is trying to get through his exams at the local college.

Pearlington, though, faces a lot of challenges. The work site managers haven’t done a very good job summarizing the cases so one has to get them to visit and then prepare work summaries. The upside of this is a much closer, compassionate relationship with the clients because the activity becomes more of an informal, family-level interaction.

I worry that after I’m gone (not that I am so important but I sense a difference in philosophy), the next work managers will just push through and that family-relationship that sustains compassion may be lost.

The three cases that really worry me are Mrs. Alice, Terry and the woman in Waveland that a group in the Arkansas Presbytery is helping. More on the latter two later.

Thanks to the Mennonites initially, and to several volunteer groups, we have made great progress on Mrs. Alice’s house. We have gotten the roof repaired, the porches repaired and installed all the drywall (Thanks to the Fountain City PC crew for the drywall installation), finished and primed it.

The groups from Canada and California really helped this week. They managed to get the interior mostly painted and they crew is installing the subfloor over the existing one. The original floor is pretty well warped and delaminated in places from water damage.

The contractor who set the house backup didn’t do a very good job leveling the home and some floors are pretty out of kilter. Because of time, we had planned to put in a new subfloor but leave as-is the areas of the floor that are out plane.

We had a skilled crew and as usual, small miracles happen when good people start a job.

As they looked at it, they determined to shim in these unlevel places using ripped 2x4’s. I’m always nervous when a crew starts some thing so significant because I worry they will not get done in a week and I’ll be left with a relatively unskilled crew the next week to finish some skilled work.

This crew worked like madmen and manager to get all the unlevel places fixed and covered with subfloor. They only could tack down the subfloor, the next group will need to carefully nail down all the edges and go down the stud/shims in the floor. Then the flooring can start.

My worry about the team that did the leveling was unjustified. Knowing we have set a mid-June objective to be done if at all possible, they said they wanted to come back from California in a couple weeks and finish.

The REAL worry is the comment by the fellow setting up the move of Pearlington to Diamondhead, “I hope they don’t try to come back in May, we need to set up Diamondhead and they will not have any place to stay.”

The sad conflict between compassion and organizational woodenness persists, hopefully compasssion will prevail.

I am going to send a note to them about where they may stay with a local family in town to get this done.The sad conflict between compassion and organizational woodenness persists, hopefully compasssion will prevail.

We should always seek to sustain compassion. I'm slowly figuring out this is the key to what PDA's mission should be for the long haul and good of the church.

Day 403 - The Unfinished Business, II

2009-05-07T01:00:00.000-05:00

Here are more cases of unmet needs for Katrina recovery identified by local advocates in Mississippi:

- Carol recently had a mobile home moved, blocked and tied down for living as a consequence of Katrina. She has some materials including cabinets, toilets and sinks but can't afford the labor to do the work. She also needs repair of flooring and some sheetrock work.

- Katrina damaged the roof of Diane's house and then the water damaged the flooring. Her husband is out of work but has construction experience and can help volunteers. They need to replace the roof, damaged decking, sub-floor and floor. The water caused electrical defects. They need help.

- a 42 yr old client in Waveland has a 52 yr old disabled spouse and three children between 9 and 16. She has completed about 80% of the repairs to the home using insurance, FEMA, MDA funds but still has doors, receptacles and covers, and a lot of interior painting and trim work. She just needs helping hands.

- A family with one child has been struggling to complete their damaged home in Waveland and is about 60% done using FEMA, insurance and MDa funds. They still need exterior siding, insulation, windows and doors but are financially unable to obtain materials.

- A 48 yr old disabled male is the sole caregiver for his two parents (88 and 77). He has managed to complete about 70% of the repair of Katrina damage using FEMAA and MDA funds and has exhausted his funds. Dishonest contractors robbed him of the majority of the FEMA/MDA funds. They failed to complete the work. He is left needing roof work, flooring, electrical work, painting and removal of damaged large tree in the yard.

- A 62 yr old disabled man is caring for a 24 yr old paralyzed son. He has accomplished abouy 90% of the work on his home and needs help with interior trim work and door installation. He has some meager funds left to help.

- A couple in their late 50's has made it 95% of the way back but has fully exhausted his funds completing all the house except the kitchen. They only need to redo the kitchen but are out of funds.

Their are perhaps twice as many cases as these fourteen mentioned in the last post and this one who could use immediate aid. That is about 40 cases. We often find that as we wok in a neighborhood residents who have given up hope are energized and come to us for similar help. There are probably triple those 40 cases, at least, that would come to us as the see help is available.

In the last six months (mid-fall through mid-spring) we resolved about 35-40 cases. That means there is easily a year or more work in the Gulfport-Pascagoula area. I would guess there may be two years of hard work and even then we will leavesome needs unmet.

* * *

The presbyterian news service in an early press release said a record $23 million was collected. A spokesperson further along in the article states "we need to keep some funds in reserve because this is an eight (2013), maybe even a 10-year (2015) response..."

Ominously, the release concludes "Any interest accrued by the contributions will be plowed back into the ongoing recovery effort." Did the church hazard these funds in the stock market? Perhaps not. There should be a published accounting somewhere.

Day 402 - The Unfinished Business

2009-05-06T06:37:00.004-05:00

In Orange Grove, we helped quite a few families since last Fall. We completed quite a few homes needing everything from simple drywall or roof repairs to major weeks-long efforts to demolishing houses so new ones could be built. We closed about 40-50 cases in our big mid-fall, winter and early spring surges of volunteers.

Even though the Louisville office closed all the village in Mississippi except one, saying the work was done, or the money has been spent (two years early in Mississippi??) cases have come to us until the end. There are twenty messages sitting on the phone in the Case Manager Liaison's office. In addition Here are a few more cries for help:

- Brenda and her husband were employed in good jobs in the Gulfport area living in a rent-to-own home. Her husband suffered a heart attack ten years ago and Brenda had a stroke right before Katrina. They safely evacuated but when they returned they found their home so badly damaged the DOT bought them out.

Like so many, they bought a mobile home at an outrageous premium, only to find it had significant damage from Katrina. They moved into the home in 2006, spent more money repairing it only to have a house fire that partly damaged it again. The husband made a make-shift repair of the roof and the live there still.

Brenda now has Hodgkin’s disease and has had another stroke. She suffers seizures and fell in the kitchen severely burning herself at the stove. The husband now has to stay with her 24 hours a day that means a full time job is not possible. They are in serious financial trouble but have been unable to secure funding for rewiring and structure repair from any aid agencies due to the depletion of funds (Red Cross, Salvation Army and others have spent all the donated funds.)

- Katie lives in Ocean Springs. She has managed to complete about half her home but is out of resources, stamina and hope.

- Jannelle was referred to us for help. She needs drywall work on her ceilings, doors, toilet and appliances installed. The cost is about a thousand dollars.

- Andy was referred to us, he needs painting, doors installed, some shelves, and other work.

- Victor needs to have help installing flooring.

- Connie needs help with her siding, windows and interior wall repair

- Vaughn needs a new roof installed.

The sad thing is all these are only a few of the cases of unmet need. They are either home-owner funded or were not able to get their applications in while the other aid agencies had funds. They are referred to us because of our covenant with our church, to hold off spending our millions of dollars of donated funds until the other agencies were spent out.

As I complete my last few days in the Gulf, the church-approved plan (Appendix 25 GAC 4/2006) keeps coming to mind. In it we state that we are to be in the Gulf until 2011, and spend about $27,000,000. Within this document the a long-term strategic allocation plan and supporting principals are enumerated:

“Funds received in the 2005 Hurricane account will only be used for Katrina/Rita/Wilma recovery. Any subsequent disasters in the same area will be responded to out of OGHS funds, or, if the disaster is large a new and separate appeal will be issued. Funds from the 2005 Hurricane account will not be diverted to other responses. (emphasis is mine)“

“This long-term recovery program is designed to operate for five to seven years in Mississippi, and eight to twelve years in Louisiana.”

Among the enumerated PDA principles these stand out:

“4. PDA will work from a long-term strategic allocation and will invest funds based on the long-range plan. All interest earned will be returned to the ongoing recovery. Funds received for 2005 Hurricanes will not be used for other disasters. “

(Question: What is the status of the funds? Were the funds invested in rock-solid instruments such as Treasury bills (as most investment bankers and brokers do with their own money) to protect them against adverse market fluctuations?)

“5. Funds received from individuals and congregations are spent after, and do not replace, government money and/or funds from the Red Cross and other “first responder agencies” that are available in the early stages of a disaster.”

On the 'questions and answers' page:

‘Is there a reason that only $4 million of the $20 million received has been expended?

“Yes. The donation-to-expense timetable is purposely front-loaded to prevent PDA’s long –term response from falling short as media headlines about the disaster fade. PDA funds follow and do not replace governmental funds that are available in the early days of the disaster.

“Is there a plan for the expenditure of the remaining funds?

Yes. We have developed a long-term strategic allocation taking us through 2013.

“Is there a plan for the expenditure of the remaining funds?

Yes. We have developed a long-term strategic allocation taking us through 2013. “

* * *

Are there any more questions?

Peace.

Day 399 - The End of a Mission

2009-05-03T09:39:00.034-05:00

When it came time for the village at Gautier to move, someone decided to close it and walk away from the people in need, or hope the village at Orange Grove could tend to them. Most everything was moved to the village in Gulfport, Orange Grove where I lived the last year.

Then, a stumbling block was placed before us at Orange Grove. This village too is now closed rather than relocated.

Orange Grove is now a shell of itself. The pods(volunteer quarters) are down, the kitchen is stripped of almost all edible food and spices, the freezers are empty and standing open and only signs of the past remain. It is hard to imagine that bustling village I drove into on my interview in late 2007, or on my first day here on March 31, 2008. (See Day 2)

Pearlington will be no more before the end of May. it is headed to another part of Hancock County, alive but barely.

Pearlington comes in a following blog entry. First here is a photomontage of Orange Grove:

It is ironic that an empty marque for the now defunct church at the village stands facing what was a sign of hope.

Is this the church's message?

Or is this our church's message?

The "welcome" sign on the village office building as the old signs in abandoned towns in the western desert proclaim: "Ghost Town"

Orange Grove Down. All the pods are now down in limp piles.

Yet some ghosts of volunteers past stand sentry to these acts:

Only an empty building remains of a 200 person church. Is this the glimpse of the future, an empty building, or is it a welcoming place for the remnant? I am reminded of and humbled by Matthew 23 (rsv), especially verses 19 and 26,"You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?....first clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean."

It is in our hands to be the church.

Day 395 - Down in Mississippi IV - Reprise

2009-04-29T20:43:00.005-05:00

Gutters for our client on Bayou Woods road and building work schedules with Jessi, our Pearlington Village manager occupied most of my day today.

I had a nice experience. A few weeks ago I was surprised to hear from my friend at Pearlington Recovery Center that Mrs. Watters still needs a little help with final tasks on her home.

Mrs. Watters, if you recall, was the subject of my fourth essay that started this whole experience (see Down in Mississippi IV at the foot of this blog page). That experience in November, 2005, went well into darkness amidst the worst mosquito attack I've experienced.

Mrs. Watters has a home that is two mobile homes joined together. When I first saw the home, it was uninhabited, partially drywalled, and remnants of household items were strewn all over by Katrina. It was muddy. There was a small ditch filled with putrefying green liquid seeping towards the ditch out front.

This time when Jessi and I turn into the driveway we see her car. She is back from work. That ditch with the green liquid is gone. I knock at the door.

"Who is it?"

"I'm Henry with PDA, we came by to see what needs done to finish up your house."

The door opens and before I can introduce myself she sees Jessi and welcomes us in.

"Mrs. Ackers, its been almost three years since I've been in your home."

"What?"

"Yes, do you remember Dr. Bob from Knoxville? I was with his crew."

"Oh my! Yes, you remember my house wasn't quite set right?"

"Yes, the last thing we did was put siding on the ends of your home and those disjointed ends were a real challenge."

I look around. The ceiling is popcorn finished now, but I can see the ridge line in the dining room where we had to work really hard to fit the new drywall in. Standing in the hallway, I looked up at the high wall, remembering as if it was yesterday working with the guys to finish that wall.

Her boys are no where to be seen, one surely must be past high school but the other one is still in school. Sometimes.

The walls are nicely painted, there is furniture everywhere and it looks really nice. She shows us the kitchen counter. It is partially tiled. Completing that tiling will be our job. If there is time, we will install some cabinets in her laundry room.

We talk a while and then take our leave. As we leave we see a compressor of ours left behind by an earlier work crew. We decide to take it to my truck and back to the village.

As I back out of the drive and make a u-turn in the next driveway I wonder where her pit bull pups went.

A thought strikes me. It was so fulfilling back in 2006 to work on these homes, giving our time and getting so much in return. At the end of the day, all we faced was the great feeling of satisfaction of doing a job well.

It changed my life yet these days I have to struggle really hard to center myself and block out all the frustrations of a job, to seek a little humility in the comfort of doing a good job.

Ask, seek and knock at the narrow gate. It is pretty narrow gate and there isn't much room for baggage. Thank you, Mrs. Watters.

Day 393 - The Good Remnant

2009-04-27T19:53:00.014-05:00

In every organization, even one that is grievously ill, good remains.

Do you know there is a move afoot to change our form of government? You can go to the links below on the proposed "new" form of government and see side by side changes of the simple and clear structure and decide for yourself if the changes are improvements or not, or just new “flowery language” to replace simple and direct statements of belief.

Some things aren't changed in it. The bottom line is a group of people elected for a short term (year or so) by the General Assembly are supposed to provide governing supervision to the operation of the Louisville organization. (You have to be in an organization about a year to truly add productivity and understand how it works.) It is called the General Assembly Council (GAC).

Our Problem
I've been a Presbyterian and an elder for about thirty-one years. Lately, I've been harsh critic of our organization, not our Church, because from my perspective by the way we select and operate our corporate office, we have allowed it to become a self-serving end in itself. Part of the story is how people motivated for good things eventually let pragmatic concerns replace compassion.

A General Assembly Council, composed mostly of short-term members, is supposed to run our church's affairs but unfortunately, the people that run that organization are our long-term employees who are members. They in fact run the church, neither the oversight body itself, nor us, its members run it because of the way it is structured.

Sure, part of the things they can’t change. If the General Assembly comes up with some odd directive, say “don’t eat at Taco Bell,” we can’t change that. The result is that three or four salaried staff end up running all the ministries of the church and present to the world by their actions what the world sees as our philosophy and belief. That is an important responsibility.

There are some very good people in the corporate organization but their voices are seldom heard. So when you throw out the bath water, let's save the babies.

It is important to understand how the Louisville operation works in relationship to the church at large. (I barely understand how the byzantine thing works myself, it is extremely hard to find detailed information on our PC (USA) web site. The only way I found even a partial bio on a staff person is to search press releases) You can go to this link or this one and try to sort it all out. You could go to the Book of Order, G13.0201. Try to sort it out an put names with your favorite mission activity.

Change Comes from Persistence

So much water goes over the dam and down the river before the stone yields to it. It is the good that is the freeing element and force for change. It is you and your fellow parishioners. You can ask for accountability.

Remember two things. The new leader of PDA has great promise, We need to support him. What he says to the public comes from information his subordinates give him. The problem is those subordinates appear to filter information for reasons unknown. It's a classic problem for leaders, they have to depend on subordinates who can embarrass them.

It can improve if you demand accountability and act on your faith. You, too, are the good remnant, fight for the good of the church and against lethargy. It isn't too late bothers and sisters.

This is my last boring complaint. I hope. From now on, until I leave the Gulf in a few weeks, I hope to tell you stories of your experience.

Peace and Grace

Day 391 - Aphasia

2009-04-25T10:52:00.005-05:00

The last volunteers left early this morning. Orange Grove is now history. Two of the Fairfax crew flew out yesterday and the other two left by van today. The Indiana crew left before I could get out of my RV to say good by.

It was a strange feeling yesterday, hard to explain. I went back to the tool trailer to organize the returned tools and realized, "why?"- they aren't going out again with a work crew. I did gather up some sanding poles and ends so we can make a big push in Pearlington next week on my project.

On my way to the dining tent I look at the totem poles with all the volunteer church signs. The thought of screwing the Penn State sign lying on the ground back onto the pole came to me but then I think, no one is coming back. I'll do it later.

Walking around the dining tent I settle in over a couple cups of coffee before a lazy breakfast of oatmeal and toast. Thoughts of past volunteers sweep through my mind. It is as if ghosts or auras are walking around the tent. It reminds me of the setting of Our Town...

I worry about the projects for next week but catch myself; there are no visits to work sites for next week to prepare for the incoming volunteers tomorrow. It's over, except for any task the work site manager or I go out to do to finally close a project or recover an errant tool.

Sitting at the dining table and reading the latest "Outlook" also is discomfiting. The articles are so out of touch with what is going on in the world, even the ones on relevant subjects have a plastic veneer to them, Talking Heads comes to mind. I see one on the staff cutbacks at the office in Louisville, boy it doesn't do justice to the facts.

I have to wait on my work site manager to get me his reports for the last week but my focus needs to turn fully to Pearlington.

I guess I'll fill up my truck with diesel leave and drive to Pearlington to drop off those tools, and on to New Orleans to catch up with my son Russell and his friend.

On the way over I'll think about what words I can't voice right now, maybe they will come later.

Peace,
Henry

Day 389 - Parts of the Body

2009-04-23T20:33:00.005-05:00

Paul's well know writing talks about us all being parts of the body of Christ and each having our role to play, each role just as important as another's.

Tonight the pastor of First PC, Bluffton, Indiana talked about that reading the next to the last night of our Village as we looked at the four timbers holding signposts for each church that has come to Orange Grove. We thought about each of those churches, many you would find a connection. We did, Winston Salem, Greensburg, PA, Pittsburgh, PA, Fairfax, VA, London, Ontario, New Bern, SC, and on and on.

Some one I would have never expected voiced a prayer that good Christian people will find their way back to help those of the families who are yet to be helped after we close the Village tomorrow, the poor, the widow, the alien in our land. The calls for help continue to come in day after day.

Our work, your work, is not done. I hope you will come on anyway. You can call one of the churches, UMCOR, or Salvation Army, or me to locate a place to stay. We can probably find a place for you, but it might be like it way the first few weeks and months after Katrina in tents somewhere. You'll have to bring tools, and maybe your tent.

A couple folks from UMCOR dropped by today. We began talking. I find one is a Presbyterian, he has joined up with the Methodists because no one in his church can get fired up enough to come.

"Fired up." Wow! It is near Pentecost.

Parts of the body...

Today I learned the Louisville organization is going to force us to take a week unpaid furlough in May or June because the Louisville budget is so short. They never thought to ask us if we'd all share the shortfall. Of course they do say they will not make the mission workers take it, if they work overseas. I guess we don't count here in America. But if I want to work anyway...

They tell us "No!"

"You can't use your phones, you can't use our tools, you can't even lift a finger to help someone."

You cannot conduct any "business" (of Christ), even if you want to work on your own time.

They call our work "business." They still don't get it. It is like they have never read Matthew. They probably will fire me for my opinion, or not look to see me back.

The funds that support us were given and designated long ago. Many of us are here because we felt a calling to serve at whatever price is demanded of us. I guess our effort in the Gulf to fulfill Christ's teaching doesn't count as mission work in some one's eyes...

A week of Sabbaths has been declared! No work, not even you goyim may work. It sounds a little like the rules of the Pharisees, doesn't it?

Now comes our challenge.

The church is healthy but parts of the body show signs of serious illness. I remain convinced that by act and deed many in the church bureaucracy, especially those who see the church as a place to climb the organizational ladder, have not fully grasped what has arisen in PDA, if they sense it at all.

Since we all are parts of the body and are all ministers, we can only heed the words, "Heal thyself, physician" and make it right.

Day 388 - Reminiscence and Anticipation

2009-04-22T19:54:00.007-05:00

The past two weeks have been a difficult combination of decision, changes and memories. This is the last week we will have volunteers and active relief work in Orange Grove.

Two weeks ago I made my decision on seminary – I’m heading for Union PSCE in Richmond. I had been seeking to rent my home for the last couple of months but finally got tired of the waiting and listed it for sale two weeks ago. I got an offer last Saturday afternoon and by Sunday afternoon we had a handshake deal. They want a fast closing so at the latest by the end of May I will be houseless.

What makes everything more stressful is PC (USA) is forcing us to take a week of unpaid leave between the middle of May and the first week of June, even though we are mission workers.

* * *

This week we have a small group from Fairfax, Virginia who were here last fall. They have been down many times staying at Gautier early on in 2005 and at other villages. There is a similar group in Pearlington from Arkansas.

In Orange Grove last night, the Fairfax guys did a nice devotional. We ended up sharing stories of past trips. On their first trip down, either late in 2005 or early 2006 one of the guys said you still could barely drive down the streets of Gautier. On each side of the street stood piles of refuse up to eight or more feet.

The piles contained TV’s, refrigerators, dressers, washers and dryers, air conditioners, and virtually any other household item you could imagine. The piles seemed to grow rather than shrink as people slowly began the painstaking cleanout of homes.

There was a fellow driving an old rattletrap pickup picking at the piles. He told the fellows he had lived here but went up to Tennessee due to Katrina, penniless. His friends in Tennessee put together $600 to buy him the truck. He and his family drove back down.

His three-year old daughter was with him. He would pull out from the pile an old air conditioner and start to work stripping the copper tubing. Any useful metal ended up in the bed of the truck.

He called one of the volunteers over and pointed to the two grocery bags in the front seat.

“I made enough from scrap the last two days to buy these groceries. We will get through this.”

* * *

The group in Pearlington told an interesting story.

“We came down to Gautier, over between Biloxi and Pascagoula. It was about three months after Katrina. We stayed in tents on the grounds of a Presbyterian Church.

“We had a little controversy. The pastor wanted us to work only on church members houses and to avoid the rest of the community.

“That seemed so awfully wrong. We left before the week was up rather than do what he wanted. We’ve never been back. We go to Louisiana or Pearlington. This is our ninth trip.

“We hear you are closing down Pearlington. We will keep coming down as long as there is a place to stay. Whether its PC (USA) or not.

* * *
This week we are finishing the second bathroom of the foster parents’ home. It feels so good to finish a job and see the look of thanksgiving.

I’m excited about seminary, it is a chance to give back so many things I’ve failed to give so far; but I keep thinking of my dear clients in Pearlington whose house was messed up by the contractor and whether or not we will get them in the house before mid-June (see Day 251).

Can I leave in good conscience if it isn’t ready?

My mind is beginning to change its focus, now I’m thinking more about those clients and how much can I get done in the next six weeks?

I’m thinking how much we need you to pick up the phone, call the call center and sign up to get to Pearlington, to get your presbytery to press headquarters about why are they not fighting harder for this mission.

I’m thinking about how Hezekiah’s wife Ruth (Day 210) said, “Mr. Henry, you are going to come back down and see us ain’t you? You aren’t gonna forget about us are you when you get off to school?”

I’m thinking, well, I’m thinking about how good it is to see you all down here and hoping that if I don’t see you here you are doing this mission at home.

We have to do the home blessing for Hezekiah and Ruth this week.

Day 384 - Where Two or Three Gather in My Name

2009-04-18T19:11:00.012-05:00

Some background about Pearlington and the Mississippi Gulf Coast might help you appreciate this story.

Pearlington has seven churches. It has a Southern Baptist church, an African-American Baptist church whose sanctuary we have worked on, and who serve Pearlington volunteers (all volunteers) lunch. The pastor of the church is Rev. Rawls. His wife and our volunteers from our village have cooperated to serve lunch virtually every day since volunteers began coming to Pearlington in 2006. Besides these two, there is a United Methodist church, a Catholic church, a church which until recently was a Mennonite church and two more African-American churches; Seven churches in all.

Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America purchased a modest mansion in the area of Biloxi for his retirement. The house, originally called Orange Grove and then Beauvoir, was completed in 1852 by a wealthy plantation owner. Davis rented the house in 1877 and two years later negotiated its purchase. The structure withstood hurricane after hurricane until Katrina destroyed it in 2005. Recently it was reopened in a fully refurbished condition with the dedication "to preserving the legacy of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and the Southern soldier."

* * *

This weekend I caught up on news from our Village Manager in Pearlington about the Easter weekend. She and a volunteer attended an early sunrise service at the former Mennonite church and then went to the Southern Baptist church on MS 604, a few hundred yards north of our village for the morning service. Prior to the service they engaged a woman member of the church in a conversation.

“It is really something remarkable about a community as small as Pearlington to have a faith community consisting of seven Christian churches.”

Almost before the volunteer had completed his statement the woman quickly corrected him.

“Oh no, that isn’t right. There are only four Christian churches in town, we have our Southern Baptist Church, the Catholic Church, the Methodist Church and the Mennonite Church.”

The black churches somehow conveniently dropped of the face of the earth. Nevertheless, they sat through the service at the church but left quickly afterwards.

The village manager continued to tell me their story.

“The pastor never mentioned Jesus’ rising. In fact, the word ‘Easter’ was mentioned not one time in the service. The service seemed to be a Good Friday service.

“If the service bulletin had not had ‘Easter Service’ printed on it you would never know you were attending an Easter service.

“ I had to look in the pew rack to confirm that they used the Bible.”

I can only wonder about this myself, remembering the debates of my childhood in my old Southern Baptist church about what to do if a black person tried to worship in our church. I have always thought, and hoped, that kind of thinking had breathed its last.

I guess I’d surmise the theology of that Pearlington church comes from Beauvoir, a couple or three score of miles east near Biloxi. I thought the distance in time though, one hundred thirty years, would have healed that wound.

Day 380 - The Tie That Binds

2009-04-14T20:40:00.006-05:00

This week is another special week. Special can mean "good" and it can mean that something stands out in contrast to other experiences, regardless of its value label.

A few weeks back the group from Fountain City, TN came down to Pearlington, They are the folks who got me into this. They needed a home to drywall and I had a home that needed it. We put up drywall together again on and off the whole week.

This week, Trinity Presbyterian Church in Fairhope, AL has sent two volunteers, almost in spite of our process to take volunteers. This church invited me to preach and responded with an outpouring of zeal (see Day 308 - It's not Too Late Brothers and Sisters.)

This is a slow week, and I am desperate since next week is our last operating week wherein we help homeowners. Trinity is our only volunteers this week. and so again, I get the more intimate work and personal experience than normal.

We've been working on this family's home about 15 or so miles east of town for several weeks. We drive through a lot of typical Mississippi countryside to get there.

We pass large farms, stands of old clear-cut land with twenty-thirty year old pines. It seemed every plot of land has a pond or lake.

We see five or six churches, mostly free-will baptist churches. We see the infrequent restaurant planted in unexpected turns in the highway," Jamie's Diner and Catfish," "Sally's Gas and Deli" and automotive body shops - "Crazy Colors Auto Body" with three high bay roll up doors.

We pass very infrequently nicely done brick farm house ruling a nice horse or Heifer farm. I can drive maybe fifteen or twenty minutes with totally dead cell phone coverage. This is back country.

When we get to the house, we find a husband in his late 50's or 60's and a loving wife. They have six early teen and under children.

Several weeks back we went out to the house to check out what work is needed. When we get there we find a story behind the home. We find a seriously ill husband striving hard to keep all his woe from his wife's awareness.

The house is packed with "stuff." The yard is full of old cars. bicycles, RV's, tricycles, broken lawnmowers, it is just filled with the junk of time. I realize we live in the South and we have a characteristic to collect; but, even the out building is full of broken tools and machines. There is no place to sit and rest.

I walk trough the house out onto a deck raised maybe 30 inches above ground. The deck is covered with an old table saw, two fiberglass shower stalls, old clothes, scraps of wood and drywall.

Standing there on the deck, I notice a white PVC pipe running out about twenty or thirty feet where it stops in a watery pool of wet dirt. I realize it is the grey water line from the sinks and kitchen.

The chickens and ducks are peckiing around in this mess. A couple of sheep wander around and plaintively bah at us.

The deck wobbles, it is barely attached to the house. i note the house is set on pressure treated and already rotted telephone pole timbers. There is an above ground swimming pool planted among all this detritus in the back yard. It is full of dark green water that a pump is circulating continuously.

I notice one of the chickens has been pecked on badly and a good part of its feathers are missing. The skin of its back, where feathers once grew stands out as a reddened sore mass. I hear that when a chicken shows red or blood in a farm, the other chickens will peck it to death. I see a turkey with a damaged wing lunge at the wounded chicken and it runs for cover under the house. There are two filthy turkeys and they are doing this damage to the chickens.

Inside the house I find one bathroom in disrepair. It stands adjacent to a bedroom for two of the kids, The room is filled to the brim with the boys' junk.

The lving room needs new wall board and a ceiling. The bathroom on the parents' end needs rebulding also.

We find out these kids are foster children. I can only imagine the disasterous home situation that led to improvement by moving them here. But this couple is fully dedicated and as good as or better than any. They pour every ounce of energy into these children, turning disfunctional elementary-aged children from screaming, crying and terrified animals into loving, playful children. It really is a great accomplishment. I hear "yes ma'am", "yes sir," see smiles and hear laughs as the girls head off to ball practice.

So we dive into repair. The earlier team from New York, bless them, crawled around under the house among dead cats and all the refuse left behind by barnyard fowl to rebuild the plumbing, to connect the grey water to the septic tank and rebuild the children's bathroom.

This week we are finishing the final items in the house, installing moulding in the living room, trimming out the drywall in the hallway and applying door trim.

One of the Trinity volunteers is a woman with long experience with Habitat for Humanity, she jumps right in. The other woman is as eager and committed, if less experienced. She also jumps in and in two days we have completed the living room molding, painted it, patched drywall in the boy's bedroom and begun finishing the hallway between living room and bedroom.

We hear of some very sinister health issues of the husband who is keeping it from the wife. I will not go into it, but I'm worried for everyone.

Today we ask to look at bathroom #2 since we want to start on it this week to ensure the small final crew of next week can complete it. We find challenges. In order to get the shower insert into the bath we are going to have to tear down a wall in the bedroom and rebuild it. We find evidence of mold in the bathroom that signals problems behind the wall board. Can we do it in a week?

As I sit writing this, all I can think of are those small children, the lives they've been saved from, the unbelievable success these foster parents have had with them even with their tenuous health, how badly foster parents are needed to justify this situation and why these things happen to children. Why?

Why?

Day 378 - Looking Backwards and Looking Forward

2009-04-12T11:35:00.003-05:00

Correction: I miss the used-to-be-frequent editorial suggestions on my former editor/critic; they kept me thinking on my toes. My erstwhile editor passed on to me a correction this morning.

In my post on Day 372 - Words of War, I referred to Ray Croc as the founder of McDonalds. Actually Richard and Maurice McDonald founded McDonalds. Ray Croc bought it in 1954 and turned it into the fast food success it is today.
* * *

Happy Easter!

I struggled through to the end of Barth last night. He is a great example of operant conditioning. You slog through verbose page after verbose page, every once in a while being rewarded with a real gem of a reflection. It was somewhat interesting that I closed the book on the eve of Easter after I had made it back to Gulfport from Chattanooga. Barth reflected on the closing lines of the Apostle's Creed.

I went back and read a little of Miles' book, Christ , that contains a similar line of thinking. It is interesting to read Protestant thinking and then Catholic thinking on the subject. There is a remarkable similarity with a nuance or two I'm embarrassed to say hadn't really fully caught the first time through. The biggest difference is that Miles at best sidesteps that line "resurrection of the body" and Barth dwells on it.

Barth says, in my modernized, inclusive language, "A Christian looks back...at sin and failure. The Christian looks forward at death, dying, the coffin, the grave, the end."

"The person who doesn't take it seriously that we are looking at that end...who is not terrified at it, who has perhaps not enough joy in life and does not know to fear the end, who has not yet understood that this life is a gift of God...does not grasp the beauty of this life, (and) cannot grasp the significance of the resurrection."

Barth says our existence is always under this threat: "You cannot live. you can only believe in Jesus Christ...and not see. You stand before God and would like to enjoy yourself..yet every day experience how your sin is new each day."

"The Lord's Supper ought to be more firmly regarded from the Easter standpoint. It is not ...a mourning meal, but a joyous meal eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood in the midst of our life. We are guests at His table and no longer separate from Him. The Christian hope (after death) is...I am no longer at the point I can die; in Him our body is already in heaven. We already live here and now in anticipation of the eschaton."

Miles makes a similar comment about the Lord's Supper. "Paul's closing comment reminds his congregation that when they perform this ritual of remembrance, they look not just back to the ceremony the Lord conducted that night before he died but also forward to his second coming, when their participation in the resurrection will be realized."

Yet Barth reminds us of the mystery when we say , "I believe in the resurrection of the body."

For Barth, " We are not some butterfly-like soul that flies away at death to a secret place. Resurrection is life's completion."

Miles observes that Christ symbolically transformed himself into the Passover lamb that was slain and eaten on this New Passover. Christ extends the ritual (as the only one with authority to do so) to drinking and otherwise consuming the blood. This is an act forbidden by God of Israel; they are not to eat 'flesh with life (blood) in it.'

Miles describes this entire event, the meal, the Passion and the resurrection as an act of God and that only God could chose to do. Christ transcends the History of Exodus on every level and give us all, not just the Jew, a new identity.

God becomes the Priest's own sacrificial lamb,
God becomes Isaac and father Abraham holding the knife,
God becomes Abel and brother Cain spilling his blood,
God becomes Esau and brother Jacob stealing his own his birthright and blessing.

God becomes all these things in a transforming way that an only be seen as mystery.

Miles says, "This sacrifice captures the prerational hunger for human sacrifice and requires no further bloodshed. Nothing will be lost. Everything will be carried forward. And Yet everything will be transformed."

At the end God turned His entire Being in the life of Israel into opposition of all He had done as El Shaddai. He rescues the vision of Israel's victory at the infinite price of twisting it into His absolute submission as a man. On the cross He speaks the closing word of Psalm 22, "It is done."

The past is left behind. Let us look forward.

Day 375 - The Beast from the Abyss

2009-04-09T16:40:00.006-05:00

I'm still reading Dogmatics in Outline by Karl Barth, as you might guess from the title of this entry. But...this has to do a bit with Gulf business and Chattanooga business.

Barth has an interesting discussion about Pilate (remember the Apostle's Creed?). I find some of his observations about "politicians" uncannily relevant to my current experience with organizations, not every leader and every organization, just a couple or three who seem stand as types.

I choose for this discussion to lump into that category of "politicians" not just governmental folk but many (some?) of us underlings in organizations who allow the role playing of "leader" in our private little domain to proscribe acting in the best interest of the state (organization).

Barth, I think, would say it is our obligation as Christians to seek the best for the state by "choosing and desiring to the best of their knowledge not the wrong, but the right State, the State which makes of the fact that it has its power 'from above', not, like Pilate, a dishonor, but an honor."

A caution is in order. I mentioned in an earlier blog entry on the Christian Realists that Barth's line of thinking can lead (and did lead) into some pretty difficult and pragmatic ground where we end up justifying the power of the state to promulgate or force our ideas of moral conformity on everyone and thereby to justify immoral action. One can take Barth's logic too far.

As a pedestrian example of the argument's insideousness, I remember one manager who always got caught up in a misreading of Paul, at least I hope it was a misreading and not a calculated reading. He often criticized certain of his employees for 'not submitting to authority.'

So read these following words and think about those 'petty politicians' (Barth's characterization) akin to Pilate who get it wrong in organizations. I remind you that Pilate handed Jesus over to his cohorts to enforce the decision of the religious Sanhedrin to put Christ to death, though had he ruled according to the strict law of the State he would have released Him according to His innocence.

Barth comments, "What does Pilate do? He does what politicians have more or less always done and what has always belonged to the actual achievement of politics in all times: he attempts to rescue and maintain order in Jerusalem and thereby at the same time to preserve his own position of power, by surrendering the clear law, for the protection of which he was actually installed." (Italics are my emphasis.)

He continues, "In the person of Pilate the state withdraws from the basis of its own existence and becomes a den of robbers, a gangster State, the ordering of an irresponsible clique. That is the polis, that is politics. What wonder that one prefers to cover one's face before it? "

He concludes, "The state so regarded...is the polis in sheer opposition to the Church and the Kingdom of God."

Having quoted all these hard words, I must add that there is a little politician in all of us, or as Groucho Marx said, "I resemble that remark!"

Peace and Grace.

Day 373 - Waiting

2009-04-07T18:49:00.007-05:00

The first Sunday after the first full Moon after the Vernal equinox.

I'm sitting in my favorite black leather chair in my living room listening to "Let your loss be my lesson" on the album "Raising Sand" by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss when I look through the window at the moon about 15 degrees over the horizon of the eastern sky.

I am reading Karl Barth, "Dogmatics in Outline" aka "Kitty Dogmatics", but then I had picked up The Bulletin of the Institute of Reformed Theology and was reading "The Artist and the Preacher: Can both proclaim the Word" by William Goettler of Yale Divinity School and thinking on the sad state of affairs of one of "preachers of the word and sacrament" who turn from preaching and to pursue ego-related activities of church organizations. It's amazing how many of them are about my age and should know better. The subject of the article is preaching parables to a lazy congregation on parables. Parables that demand our attention to their assailing our own behavior, or a carefully deaf ear lest we do see and understand.

Karl Barth lived through the Nazi Holocaust. As a German, he found himself intimately tied into it. While unbelievable verbose, he really grasps some significant elements of our belief. In his dissection of the Apostle's Creed, he remarks "Everything heavenly, like everything earthly, is ultimately self-conditioned. It may meet us like the messenger of a mighty king, whom we might regard with astonishment as a great and mighty man, in the face of whom, we still know he is only a messenger. We know there is something higher...We have experienced the most frightful things [in World War II in Germany], but man is not broken by the lords who are not the Lord. "

He is speaking, of course, about God's only Son, "The ultimate revelation of God Himself" who mysteriously appeared as a man and as the Jehovah of the Old Testament, a man like us in space and time who has all the properties of God and does not cease to be human and submits to accusation, condemnation and Crucifixion, this man who is the Jehovah of the Old Testament."

I contemplate this watching the moon rise through my window, two days before 14:58 GMT April 9, 2009, when early in the morning GMT, it becomes full on a young Maundy Thursday, a day of grief, joy, wonder, fear, helplessness, hope, hopelessness, the end of the past, the beginning of the future, humility, humiliation, the fulfilment of the covenant with Israel and the world, the day an invaluable debt was paid in advance.

Hopefully even those preachers who have forsaken their obligation, their prepaid debt and their calling by that God-Man-Spirit Mystery to preach will hear and understand, and turn away from their foolishness pursuing their ambition of worldly status and power while standing on and holding down those they have entered a covenant to help.

Shalom

Day 372 - Words of War

2009-04-06T12:12:00.010-05:00

Today I thought I would take a little respite from my Gulf-related stories (though in actuality I guess I am not since the subject of this entry draws people and many billions of dollars from relief efforts for the good of people).

In the mid-1980's Joan Croc, wife of the deceased Ray Croc (founder of McDonald's) published in the local San Diego paper a series of quotations on war from men who knew war all to well. Here they are to emphasize the historical repugnance of war, the words of three Presidents, a theologian, four generals who fought wars, statesmen and a new addition by a latter day wag, in chronological order:

"War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys family. Any scourge is preferable to it." - Martin Luther 1569

"God is ordinarily for the big battalions against the little ones." Roger, Count Bussy-Rabutin, 1677

"I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another." Thomas Jefferson, 1794

"It is well that war is so terrible - we would grow too fond of it." Robert E. Lee, 1862

"Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, 1878

"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell." William Tecumseh Sherman, 1880

"The first casualty when war comes is truth." Sen. Hiram Johnson, 1917

"War is much too important to be left to the generals." George Clemenceau, 1935

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." Dwight D. Eisenhower, c. 1952

"War is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate. Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in the world." Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966

"Vietnam is what we had instead of happy childhoods." Michael Herr, 1977

"Iraq and Afghanistan - will we never heed the lessons of history?" Henry Paris, 2009

Shalom

Day 368 - Fathers and Sons II

2009-04-02T06:07:00.002-05:00

Hezekiah, Ruth and Samuel obtained their certificate of occupancy yesterday! (See day 210) The last little bit of work took almost three weeks, complete plumbing, install cabinets, finish trim... We were fortunate to have three crews from Bayside PC in New York finishing the remaining items on the punch list. We still have some cosmetic trim work to do, and refinish the floors, but the house can be lived in with the certificate of occupancy..

It seemed the closer we got, the slower the work went. I drove by last Friday to see if the house passed inspection but no one was there. I went back Monday afternoon and found all three of them there. Samuel and Ruth were working on the flower beds, resetting the brick border, planting hydranga and other shrub and Hezekiah was in the housepainting trim molding.

The inspector had come out and found a couple of small items. The mechanical contractor had not filled gaps between the air handler and ceiling, and the gap around the condensor lines in the outside wall with fireproof caulk. Hezekiah went ahead and fixed those and yesterday morning early I called the code and inspection office for a revisit.

The call from my work site manager came about 2:30PM - they passed. What a relief! The last I heard Samuel was sanding the oak floors with a sander we rented for him.

We have put a lot of people back in their homes and the joy I share with the happy home owner is always the same. I feel satisfaction, relief, pressure to get onto the next house before we leave..a potpourri of conflicting emotions that bleed over into my whole life.

I know I'll be working hard in Pearlington in a couple weeks and soon thereafter, on to seminary. I will not get to see what Ruth's home looks like when it is fully replanted. Unless I come back.

If I do, I wonder what it will feel like to drive into town knowing the Village is gone and see a blue roof. I imagine my first urge will be to drive back to that Village and get my record book to visit the house...

Six month can seem like a long time. It is time enough to develop close friendship but too brief a time to enjoy it fully. A year is hardly long enough.

Day 366 - Retrospective by a Member of The Frozen Chosen

2009-03-31T07:37:00.004-05:00

Locked in place - Come to the Gulf and help for you will then know of the post-Katrina syndrome.

The volunteer related her story, "We showed up and looked at the house. The house had lost its roof and there was a lot of water damage. Mr. Hargrove had the roof fixed so at least things were dry. It was chocked full of stuff. It was hard to see how the family moved around. It looked like nothing had moved since all this was placed here after Katrina. Furniture, boxes stacked around and unmoved for the last three and one-half years. We had opened the door to a small room of the kitchen and looked in. It was the laundry room. It hadn’t been opened since the roof was put back on the house. It was terrible. All sorts of critters had been using the space. There was dirt and filth all around inside it."

We asked if we could start moving things in order to work on his ceilings and Mr. Hargrove said "ok.”

Mr. Hargrove watched the crew moving his belongings for a while and then spoke up, “Let me help.”

He started in with an activity he probably hadn’t shown since 2005. Surprisingly he opened the laundry room and started dragging out stuff and throwing it out in a pile in the yard. Before we left for the day he had it emptied of all the wasted things and had cleaned off and wiped down the first shelf I n the cabinet over the washer.

Louise is a dedicated single mother. She had just adopted her two pre-school grandchildren. She had her significant other live in a house where only a living room (garage conversion), bath and one bedroom for her and her significant other live. The other parts of the house still are damaged from Katrina. The dining room and living room are full of what belongings they saved from Katrina and so full as to b unusable. Her “significant other” is handicapped; he had a stroke a while back.

We left them with a fully restored home. I dropped off a lot of Christmas gifts given to me for that purpose by from Northside Presbyterian Church.

Mrs. P, working part time in D’Iberville with three children. The house is virtually empty of furniture. The house needed repainting, roof fixed, eliminate water inflow into the rear of the house from that roof problem. We did it all, and she was our first home blessing.

Mr. and Mrs. Pearson are in a bind, their house wasn’t even 25% restored when I met them. They has lost large sums of money on disreputable contractors and had some construction problems I only had a bare idea of how to fix. We managed to get a Salvation Army grant and with the help of CARE, a Pennsylvania Mennonite relief group we rebuild that construction problem. Last week my good friends from Fountain City Presbyterian Church, on their 13th trip down and 56th house, dry walled 95% of the house. A good crew from Youngstown is finishing what remains this week. It is looking like we will get them into their house soon.

Mr. & Mrs. Seale were living in a molding, 100 yr old home in Gulfport. We successfully got funding and with some of our own resources stripped the home to studs and refinished it. It has taken six months but we should have gotten a certificate of occupancy yesterday or today. We’ve become good friends and I’ve learned lot about the dedication of a son to his parents.

Preaching at Trinity PC in Fairhope was my first foray into ministry. I still remember the lady who walked up with a check for our mission effort that I thought was for $500 but was for $5,000.

I can’t get the woman with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease out of my mind. She lives in a mobile home without central heat, spent $30,000 of her FEMA money of a new home, her children and this worthless mobile home. The man never delivered the new home - she paid cash. Her caseworker doesn’t like her so she gets no access to even the little public resource that might be available.

I remember the majestic home on thirteen foot piers that is slowly crushing the supporting girders holding the house on the piers, yet the owner, caught between insurance company fraudulent contractor and MEMA insisting on taking his cottage back insists on moving in rather than letting us fix the problem before the next major storm that may destroy the house.

There were the days on the bayou out at Jimmy’s home, eating shrimp or crawfish and talking about what we had done in Pearlington and where the future may lead.

There are the special people I’ve met as village staff, Heather, Jeremy, Leslie, Mark, Michelle, Jessi, Michael and others. There are the volunteers from Philadelphia, New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Arkansas, Davison, Virginia and North Carolina.

There is the group from Utah led by a pastor’s wife who announced, “I won’t work on that house, it is nicer than my own,” and whose youth volunteers apologized for the behavior of the adults.

There is the fellow in Pascagoula whose kitchen floor and bedroom walls we repaired who brought us po-boy shrimp and crawfish sandwiches for lunch and who wrote us checks every week for offering from his meager social security, a giving of proportion probably greater than almost any of us give. He would apologize if the check were late.

There is Larry who helped me learn more about Pearlington so I could figure out when I was helping good folks and who to watch out.

I helped as we struggled to set up our efforts for Ike relief in the Galveston area.

There has been the outpouring of support from my church, Northside, and the rock and roll effort to apply and gain admittance into seminary.

There has been for me the most profound humiliation by my pride as I watch and help people who by all rights should have given up; a humiliation of us as a people as we fail to really work to help those in need as I drive down US49 or I-10 and read the billboards advertising the next big entertainer or music group or the loosest slots in town.

There has been for me an assurance, a reaffirmation of the goodness of humankind as I see the suffering show more bravery and hope than I have mustered, as I see volunteers return as changed lives.

And finally, I heard someone in Louisville say ruefully last week as staff reductions were discussed, “You aren’t in the Presbyterian Church you were born into.” I see a glimmer of hope that this church is being changed by these volunteers and the needy they help into something more than the “church we were born into” as they live the Good News Jesus preached.

Day 363 - The Waters Came

2009-03-28T08:12:00.006-05:00

It started raining two days ago.

Each night we had very strong thunderstorms. I was awakened Wednesday night by a peal of rolling thunder that lasted about 30-40 seconds. and worry over tornado watches and warnings. We had one hit several miles north of our village but no fatalities thank goodness.

It began raining in earnest Thursday. Fortunately in Gulfport most of the rain was fairly light and the heavy downpour was west and north of town. Thursday night the jet stream had moved further south and the storm track was through New Orleans and out into the Gulf. There was a continuous line of severe rain and thunderstorms literally just off shore extending out in the Gulf. For the entire day ominous dark clouds lay low in the sky over the Gulf but we had partly sunny/rain in Gulfport.

I went to Pearlington yesterday to help finish drywall in one of our special clients and we had rain on and off all day. On the way over I almost had to pull over on I-10 because visibility was so bad. Fortunately that downpour only lasted a few minutes but rain continued all day. We had one small tornado hit a high school ball field in Pascagoula, destroying the scoreboard. Early Friday morning (1:30AM) a twister hit St. Matthew's Catholic Church in north Hancock County (Pearlington's county) and shredded the parisj hall, sparing the sanctuary and rectory.

As I left Jimmy Lamey's home after dinner in Pearlington last night, the rain bgean again and followed me all the way back to Gulfport. The forcast was ominous for the remaiming night.

It started raining in earnest about 10 PM in Gulfport and kept on, at times in a torrential downpour.

Thunder awakened me about 1:30AM. I discovered my RV was leaking, rain drenched my cell phone so do call me on the PC(USA) phone. Water soaked a lot of my papers. I turned on the TV to get the latest weather. We were in the midst of a "train" of storms.

There were two "trains." One tracked north of the coast but the other started in Gulf and tracked across our south Mississippi area, hitting the Gulfport to Pascagoula area very hard. Water is covering roads in Ocean Springs and as I write this morning, all the rivers are peaking at or over flood stage or have already done so in the eastern side of the coast. We are safe here in the village but we have had almost ten inches of rain in this storm.

Between about 10PM and 5AM when the last tornado watch expired we had 3.8 inches of rain. That number is at the airport, some areas have had over 6-8 inches last night in a lot of places in the back country. Many areas were taking up to or over 1 inch/hour over most of the night.

The Biloxi River is 4 feet over flood stage this morning and still rising. Our Volunteer Village Manager is trapped in her home by water surrounding her neighborhood in Ocean Springs.

The Pearl River, already over the flood stage, isn't expected to crest until Tuesday or Wednesday, two or more feet over flood stage. The village manager in Pearlington says everything is ok; but she may not be thinking about that impending crest on the river a quarter mile away from the camp.

I'm heading for Pearlington again about noon to debrief our work site manager whose last day is tomorrow. I cross the Wolf River and the swampy area at NASA Stennis between MS 603 and MS 607 on the way over. The water is always only a few feet below the road, It will be interesting to see where the water is.

I'll check the Pearl River when I get to Pearlington, and hope my RV dries out a little by evening.

What a night!

Day 360 - The Chief End of Mankind

2009-03-25T06:17:00.006-05:00

Fountain City Presbyterian Church has made 13 independent work trips and worked on 56 houses. On their first trip they stayed in the First Presbyterian Church in Bay Saint Louis in November 2005. The church shuttled workers between there an the airport as they came in. First Baptist Church of Los Angeles arrived with two big refrigerator trucks full of food and set up two big dining tents in the parking lot. They fed anyone who came. They placed a big sign out front, “No Donations Accepted.”

This time Fountain City is helping us get a couple into their home in Pearlington who are facing loss of their MEMA cottage. I managed to get the CARE group to help us rebuild the disaster a local contractor made and re-roof the house. Fountain City started hanging drywall last Sunday afternoon and it looks like they will finish by Friday so we can finish it and then tackle the floors.

The homeowner's MEMA “representative” had scared them to death asking them to sign a “demo” notice since their “lease” expires March 31. What does “demo” mean to you?

They spend weeks worrying they would come back and see all their belongings piled out on the ground and the cottage gone.

I was there with our case manager liaison when the MEMA representative, her “advocate” came by.

“This notice means that at any time from now on, MEMA may show up to demobilize this cottage.”

”But we have to be in Mobile for a medical procedure on my husband April 1.”

Only after persistent questioning were we able to extract the information that their cottage would not be removed until they had vacated it and removed all their belonging. We also found out we could request an extension, hopefully beyond the time we estimate it will take to get her house ready.

Thank you, State of Mississippi for your compassion.

Bay Road Presbyterian Church has been coming since November, 20005. They came to Gautier, MS with 17 people that first year, 9 church members and 8 from the community, then 28 the next year at Houma, and by the third year they had 60, enough they decided to break into 20 person groups and come over three weeks. This year they are back again for three more weeks at Orange Grove. The have people from Mexico City, Savannah and Canada with them.

They are putting the finishing touches on a couple’s home in Gulfport. We started this work last Fall and we ought to see a home blessing this week or next.

West End Presbyterian Church is down for he third time. Their first trip to Orange Grove was the day before Easter in 2006 – the flower baskets that they placed on the front of the church are still there.

Trinity Presbyterian Church is on their 10th trip. They first came to Orange Grove in November, 2005. The camp was rough. They used PVC framed showers with black plastic bags for walls. They returned in December and again the following March.

These two churches are working in the Gulfport area to complete two homes. One of them is the one in Pascagoula where a couple are taking care of a 100% handicapped adult child. The other is the home of a couple west of here. This couple has taken in foster children and adoptees building character and values in them. The family retrieved their two sons from school so they could work with the group one day.

Although I don’t like to see kids taken out of school frivolously, I imagine this was a good thing. The boys, 12 and 13 worked side by side. I’m sure they learned something valuable about giving of one’s self from the volunteers. I know the volunteers learned something.

These ministers, along with the thousands who preceded them, achieved the great end.

Day 353 – Broad Shoulders and Willing Hearts

2009-03-18T06:15:00.002-05:00

The man said, “It’s hard, I feel like God sometimes.”

It was early 2006 in low-lying Gautier, a city east of Biloxi that took on severe damage by the hurricane. He was standing before a makeshift table made of scrap plywood resting on sawhorses and a crew of thirty or so was waiting and watching patiently behind him. The group was still a little grimy and muddy from the work of the day before. Everything was soiled. muddy and moldy.

The table was covered with those square plastic crates; each crate was full of clipboards holding several sheets of paper covered with handwritten notes. The top sheet of each board had a street address and the work to be done at the house at the address. The worksite manager, well, he really wasn’t a work site manager then because this whole process had just begun a few weeks earlier and no one had the time to figure out exactly what an organization might look like, they just came. They just came for what reason? Some of them probably couldn’t really voice a reason, they didn’t come to be a writer or hold some longstanding internal theological struggle, they came because this is such a vast disaster and so many are suffering, they came because of an internal theological imperative, and this man is standing there looking at the table covered with plastic container filled with vertically stacked clipboards each holding a tragic story while he thinks about the thirty people standing patiently behind him and measuring their skills against this kaleidoscope of trouble before him on the table. Finally, with a little sigh he reaches out and pulls up a clipboard at random and reads aloud the work order, “Needs a roof. You guys can’t do a roof.” He puts that clipboard back in its nest and reaches for another one a few inches away, “House shifted about a foot off foundation, need to see if it can be moved back." " Too dangerous and needs heavy equipment,” he says, and slides that one back with another sigh.” He takes a third one. “House needs to be mucked out, tear out all drywall to studs.” He smiles and turns to the group, “You guys can muck out a house, here take this one.” The group leader, standing by the work manager takes the clipboard from him and notes the address. As he turns to marshals his group to the job, the work manager speaks to him in a low voice, “This job, sometimes I feel like Solomon, or God, I don’t know how long I can do it.” You can see the glint of a tear in his eye.

***

PDA has come a long way on the sacrifices of the people who came in the absence of organization, when chaos called. They gave much of what they had. They forged the beginnings of a program out of nothing but hope and a theological imperative somewhere deep within themselves. The beauty of action and commitment is we get better at it the longer and harder we work.

This morning I am about to step out into a new day, it is supposed to be sunny and in the 70’s. We have a village of 104 volunteers; all our jobs are organized; no longer on clipboards stuffed in plastic crates, but printouts from files on our personal computers. Each job has been reviewed and a work plan mapped out with a material list and as best we can, work assigned to groups by skills.

We have a way to go, we are closing this village on a month. As I look out over it, I see the image of that early worksite manager, the insurmountable glut of work on those clipboards, some of which still are in our village office, and that tear in his eye.

We couldn’t be here without his effort and those of the few who helped move a stodgy organization, as inflexible as ourselves because it is ourselves, to action. Hopefully we have further forged our process into an improved working response that we can carry forward to the next challenge. The weight of our choice for work today, the unmet need of the one we can’t help today, still lies heavy on my heart though.

Day 351 - Aliens and Sojourners

2009-03-16T21:30:00.003-05:00

Things are extremely hectic. We have 104 volunteers in the village. It is really an interesting challenge to keep ten-twelve groups in materials and supplies, scheduled and organized, not to mention keeping track of what is going on in Pearlington.

I spent the weekend in Chattanooga. I had a couple of business matters to attend, more on that later. It was rainy the whole weekend and I had to build a hand railing on my lower deck landing in the rain. Still haven't rented my house, and I'm getting antsy about that. It is hard sometimes to abide and wait on events.

I had a couple folks ask me about my last few blog entries. I know three or so entries ago I was pretty harsh on some issues.

My opinion hasn't really changed, but during the interim I had to write a scholarship essay for Columbia Theological Seminary on my convictions on an important issue for the church and how the church might respond. (I received notification today I have been accepted there. Now I've succeeded in making my life difficult because I have to decide between three very good seminaries.)

I'm wandering but the blog entries and the scholarship essay really reflect on the title of this blog (from I Peter 2:11-12 and some commentary by Professor Lewis Donelson at Austin PTS.) It has some good ideas but I wrote it fast and it has a few semantic or logical holes.

Here is the essay:

What are your convictions about one significant issue facing the church and/or society?

Church, Culture and Values: Can Christian Realism be saved?

One significant issue facing the church has challenged it perhaps since shortly after its inception; the study, understanding and instruction of Holy Scripture and confessions to form a doctrine of Christian living in a dynamic (changing and seductive) culture. It is a particular issue in our western world since the post-world war II era. Karl Barth, one of the “Christian realists” of the mid 20th Century, in Dogmatics in Outline defines dogmatics, the church’s proclamation to the world, by a question: “What are we to think and say?”

His definition follows from the idea that interpretation of Holy Scripture and Confessions arises not from an absolute inspiration of “(religious) truth,” but rather from a spiritual measure of the church at work in the world that is always liable to some error and subject to refinement and correction in the light of experience and growth. He further formulates three “public languages” of that church proclamation:
(1) The formal language of the church evinced in our Sunday worship,
(2) The common language of the World, by which I understand to mean that we speak publically to the “sick” or “evil” attitudes of the World,
(3) And finally the most important, the language of our public actions in the World.

The Christian realists (see for example, Heather Warren, Theologians of a New World Order) forged a Christ-centered world-view to manifest church proclamation in the early to middle of the last century. This was a reaction to the Social Gospel of the previous century. The realist’s doctrine of activism is based on acknowledging individual sin and pragmatic personal action, and they extended it to include manipulation of the state to advance Christianity.

Warren quotes R. Niebuhr (p51), “…because social groups are more selfish than individuals, society must use coercion – that violates the ethics appropriate for the individuals - to restrain the destructive egoism of races, classes, and nations.” This thinking led them to rationalize the use of the state to promulgate “just” actions up to and including intended assassination of world leaders such as Hitler. These realists were instrumental in bringing the United States into war with Germany.

Seventy-seven years later we are surrounded by a material society that begs us to buy and has a growing scientific understanding of the world that challenges traditional belief - all more or less a consequence of those Christian realists. We have churches that offer gyms, evening self-development programs and the like, usually under the rationale that once we get people into the church building we may develop them as members. At times a primary consideration of the sermon and conversation appear aimed to avoid “ruffling feathers.”

An outside observer, for example, a follower of Islam or even a Christian living in Africa, might conclude a goodly portion of the culture of the Western World has supplanted or seduced our own dogma. In a candid moment, we might acknowledge that our post-WWII Western culture has embraced an increasingly high economic status for us and principal preoccupation with it as a cultural substitution for Christian dogma grounded in care for the widow, orphan and alien in our land.

On the other hand the explosion in the post-WWII era of scientific knowledge of the world and technical capability to manipulate it has caused some in our reformed church to react to use the state to promulgate belief. They follow R. Niebuhr’s idea in the previous paragraph but have abandoned Barth’s caution to remember that our understanding of Scripture is “ liable to some error and subject to refinement and correction in the light of experience and growth.”

The result is an unhealthy (to our reformed tradition) reactionary response of the church to use church and state government to proscribe certain behaviors as being objectionable to belief and remove individual choice to think and decide. Some recent examples are homosexuality and church, reproductive choices, genetic manipulation, and the advance of neuroscience to reveal mental processes of personality, love, morality and spirituality (Science, “Neuroscience and the Soul, vol. 323, 27 Feb 2009, p1168)

How might the church make a faithful response to that issue?

Many of us appear to have lost the sense of Matthew 16:24-27; 19:16-26, 22:35-48 and 25: 31-46, if not also our fundamental faith in our earliest creed, “I believe in God…” It does little good to call for individual action and use Barth’s three languages of Christian proclamation if we fail to understand our limited knowledge of the world in the here and now and acknowledge our fallen nature at all personal levels. Christianity needs a living document as its doctrine. How do we save, or recast, the valuable elements of “postmodern” Christianity into a functional Realism?

Bart’s thinking is a persuasive tool. A living doctrine for Christian practice can only be had through investigation and exposition of the Holy Scripture in the context of understanding the world of here and now that we live. The church in its worship and teaching can lead members to contextual understanding of its essential tenets. A vital step for saving the church may rest on its response to materialism and the challenges posed by advances in science and engineering human health and reproduction, weaponry and knowledge.

Consider current scientific astronomical observations that show clear evidence of star systems with planetary orbiting bodies. What will be the reaction and implication on our thinking of the literal authority of the Scriptures if sentient beings come to be known on one such system?

Church leaders need to have a deeper understanding of the science and technology that increasingly benefit, threaten and shape our world and thought, and create social inequities in application. Thereby, we may effectively call the church to interpret Scripture and our confessions meaningfully in the context of here and now (in time).

In this way, the church can refocus on Barth’s recipe of Christian dogmatics as the response of the faithful to interpret theologically the empirical observation of the world (science if you will have it). Programs such as Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, understood in scriptural context, offer a very powerful experience of giving of self to help the afflicted, the poor and the widow.

For many people this creates a healthy dissonance with our materialism. It is tempting to see returning volunteers as glowing embers of zeal that will stoke the remnant of the church that survives these troubled times.

In other words, the Church should help both reactionary and “post-modern” cultural elements manifest the essence of the dogma of the church that calls for acts that reflect being with God (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q #1)

Day 349 – The Chief End of Humankind – Pearlington Update

2009-03-14T09:37:00.008-05:00

This is an update on the status of our church-wide stewardship to Pearlington, Mississippi and surrounding area. Volunteers at Pearlington serve by working on homes from lower Pearl River County, and in the County of Hancock from Kiln, Bay St. Louis/Waveland to Pearlington itself. At times we also work on homes across the Pearl River towards Slidell, LA.

In the area of Pearlington itself we work on homes that are served by a number of aid and construction partners in addition to PDA. These groups are Pearlington Recovery Center, located at the old Charles B. Martin Elementary School, the Mennonites working under a group called CARE, Baptist affiliated groups and individual church groups who have made Pearlington a primary focus for their mission, an example being Fountain City Presbyterian Church in the Knoxville, TN area.

Some of these groups have been funded by grants. The Pearlington Recovery Center, the longest standing organization, loses its funding May 31 and will no longer be operating after that date. The Baptist recovery organization disbanded this winter. The Mennonites are still here but working out of Bay St. Louis. The Fountain City group, bless them have been coming 3-4 times per year since Katrina hit. I owe them thanks because they led me here.

A few independent volunteer groups such as Fountain City are still coming down. The Philadelphia Presbytery still has a commitment to work with us until we meet the needs in Pearlington. The Arknasas Presbytery is assembling groups of churches in a commitment to follow through on one home until it is completed by year's end. PDA is committed to working at Pearlington at our Village until October, 2009.

A number of factors will influence PDA’s decision to remain or close our village at that time. Our rent has increased therefore it costs more to support volunteers, and our volunteer numbers are dropping which significantly increases that effect. We operate our village under a temporary use permit that must be renewed annually by the County of Hancock. We have encountered some resistance to renewing that permit from local contractors, some of whom are on the board that approves the use.

This worry is really misplaced since the majority of these home owners can’t afford contracted services. In fact, fraudulent contracted services are the cause of much of the heartache in the whole Mississippi area. The bottom line at this point in my unofficial opinion is that PDA will seek to keep running our mission in Pearlington at some location as long as there is a robust flow of volunteers, funds and work to do.

For the most part the future of recovery of Pearlington, and the Gulf, is in your hands.

Is there a need for volunteer effort? The short answer is yes.

PRC has twelve homes under construction. It looks like six of them are in pretty good shape after PRC closes on June 1. The other six however need help or they may not get completed.

There is one home in Pearl River County that is caught up in an alleged fraud by one of the local aid groups and left only as a framed-in shell. The owners are a young man and wife with several very young children, including one who has had operations for a heart problem. They lost everything through Katrina and he is trying to complete the house through loans and what money he can glean from what is left from his pay after taking care of his family expenses, a family. They need help.

As I get into the actual casework, I am finding many unmet needs in Waveland. Historically we haven’t paid a lot of attention to Waveland and Bay St. Louis but these two incorporated cities were hit as badly as Pearlington. There is a lot of socio-economic stratification in these two towns and the poor are being crushed under the hard boot heel of some of the well-to-do in those towns who seem to desire that part of the population go away.

Whether that attitude comes from a pecuniary interest or just the "not in my backyard" mindset, it deserves our resistance through our aid. I apologize for my strong language but this is what I read in the newspapers and hear said by community advocates who are longstanding residents.

There are many more homes that are being repaired. We call these “rehabs.” Between PRC and PDA I estimate there are about eighty known homeowners (perhaps about 150-300 people) who either can’t live in their homes, are living in them but shouldn’t, are in marginally livable situations, or are in homes that have had minimal repairs and can be lived in but repairs are not completed.

In the face of limited volunteers we are in a mode where we have to set job priority on a “triage” basis that takes into account dire need, number of volunteers and skill level of volunteers. Although I will protect the confidentiality of these clients, I can give you some idea of these needs.

There is single mother who has four children living separately from her and who is living in a MEMA (Mississippi Emergency Management Agency) cottage that must be repossessed by the end of March. She has to work and is also trying to keep one of her teenaged girls out of trouble.

There is a couple in Pearlington who have been bilked out of tens of thousands of dollars by dishonest contractors. The husband has a serious chronic illness and the wife is struggling to carry on the repair work through us. They face an undetermined eviction from their MEMA cottage in the next month or two. We have had to dismantle a large part of the faulty construction of this home by one of those contractors. By the Grace of God we have found aid from the Mennonites on this construction and re-roofing, and hopefully the Fountain City crew will help make a dent in the drywall job so we can get them in a real home.

There is another couple in the same boat. They live in a MEMA cottage and their house has been almost completed when we found gross construction defects by contractor with fraudulent credentials that must be repaired to prevent structural failure.

There is a single mother who has had very extreme, difficult and threatening spousal problems. Living under that dark cloud she has several pre-school and elementary aged children whose small modular home needs repair just to have a small piece of safe, peaceful existence to rebuild her family’s life.

There are many other homes in the Pearlington area among those eighty that need partial repair. If we leave with this work undone, we do not know how, when or if the work will be completed.

If we had commitments from churches to provide 75 volunteers from now through October, only for fifty percent of the open days we would probably have enough support to fight to carry on until this mission work is done hopefully in 2010 and be able to reflect positively on the answer to first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (inclusive language in italics is mine) :

Q. What is the chief end of humankind?  A. Humankind’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Day 345 - Up for air

2009-03-10T23:10:00.003-05:00

The last couple weeks have been extremely busy. I got calls from NYC to send more detail on needs at Pearlington. I've been overwhelmed and found it hard to reply as we have about 60 college folk from Pen State campuses in Orange Grove this week, and next week we have 78 from U. Minn. campuses for a couple or three weeks. I'll get you more.

We have two new work site managers here in Gulfport. This adds to the confusion since they need a week or two to figure it all out.

On the good side one small set of the group of 60 (4-5) went into the logistics trailer and in the space of 2-3 hours had everything out and back in in a remarkable order. Amazing.

New Life Community Church, nee' Orange Grove Presbyterian Church held its last service this past Sunday at a 3PM service. In our normal morning service we discussed Rev. Castleman's scripture reading, I Peter 2: 4-10. It was a nice follow up on my earlier blog about volunteers being embers taken back to their home church to fan the flames of zeal. Living stones. You guys are a diaspora of a modern kind. Watch for a subsequent blog.

I had three other remarkable things happen in the last two weeks. First, I was in Pearlington late in the day trying to get back to Gulfport for Family Night but needing to stop at a home we are working in Waveland. US 90 is closed between Bayou Woods Drive and MS604. They are tearing the bridges out and rebuilding. As a result, if you want to get from Pearlington to Waveland you have to go down Whites Road to its original terminus and then drive about two miles over a washboard loose gravel road they have extended over to US90. It adds delay, beats up the car and is really dusty. (A couple of us from Fountain city PC tried tp drive down this road in November 2006, and we couldn't make it because it was so muddy and sloppy.)

We I get to the intersection with US90 and find an anomaly, a traffic jam. A big truck is stopped on the gravel road at the US 90 intersection and a van behind it, then me in my pickup. I lean out my window to see what is going on. The truck driver is talking to a couple of bicyclists stopped at the intersection. Soon both truck and van leave.

As I pull up I see these guys are long distance travelers. Being a cyclist myself I have to say something to them. They tell me left Biloxi this morning and are trying to get to the bike shop in Slidell this afternoon to purchase a tire but are puzzled by the closed US90. How do they get to Slidell?

I explain they have two choices, they can turn around and take MS607 to MS604S which dead ends into US 90 0n the other side of the two bridges, probably a 25 mile or more ride. The alternative is to go down the two mile washboard. Believe me, with a road bike that is insane if not impossible.

As usual I have that crew in Waveland on my mind, the homeowner dinner later in Gulfport and how long it would take me to help these guys out.

"Do you want me to give you a ride down to the point where Whites Road regains pavement?"

"That would be really nice of you if you want to do it."

So we put the bikes in the truck bed and I head or P-town. We talk in the truck. One fellow, Tony Thompson, is a 61 year old guy from Britain and the other fellow is from Baltimore, if I remember right. They are on a cross country ride primarily to raise funds for a young lad named Gus who is 10. He has a disability and needs a specially adapted bicycle to do this trip with his family. You can get details at .

I got to the intersection of Whites Road and Jenness where pavement started. I figured why not drive them all the way to MS604. I left them at the United Methodist Church on the corner and after some good byes and hand shakes, I spnd off to Waveland, quite a few minutes late but all the better for having met my new friends.

A few days later, I dropped by the Pearlington Recovery Center to talk to Larry Randall about their case load and to get some background on a few of ours. PRC is closing June 1. This will leave only our organization and maybe one other. I talk about one of my more troubling cases, I need to build some special roofs on this house. Larry says, why don't we call his contact with the Mennonites a they are really pretty good builders. I eventually talk to Aaron of CARE (Community Aid Relief Effort) whose "motto" is "Our goal is to help bring relief to those in need, showing Christ in every effort of aid."

Allen and James showed up today along with roofers and I spent all day with my work site manager driving back and forth to the Lowe's in Waveland bringing posts and beams, concrete pads, roofing felt and nails.We still need to go back for extra sheathing to repair, drip edges and shingles. I expect they will get the gabled roofs up before they leave this weekend.

It hurts me that I have to drive to Chattanooga Thursday for a friday morning physical and to have a conversation with my company. These fellows need my thanks.

Another good thing has been the series of essays I wrote for scholarship applications to Austin Theological Seminary and Columbia. Both were a good exercise, I refined my thinking about some subjects. Watch for them in a blog entry.

Part of that good thing was the gift card to Barnes & Noble from my brother, Mark. I bought four good books:

"Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson

"Dogmatics in Outline," a 1946 lecture series by Karl Barth

"Models of God" by Sallie McFague, and

"The Freedom of a Christian" by Martin Luther.

The first was good but not great. Barth'sbook, a dense (and verbose) tomb was very helpful. I'm not sure when I'll get to McFague and Luther, but soon.

The last good thing happened after the closing church service Sunday. One of the crew from Presbytery of Mississippi, Bruce Byers, came up to me and asked about another client here in Gulfport I am really feeling bad about. We will never finish his house before April 30.

Bruce mentioned this guy's name and that a crew who had previously been at our village and worked on the house raised the question of status. Bruce told me thy want to pick up the work on the house after we leave. What a relief.

All I can say is God is good.

All the time, God is good.

Peace,

Henry

Day 334 - Retrospective

2009-02-27T20:41:00.004-06:00

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, 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

Day 332 - Getting Out of The Boat

2009-02-21T18:45:00.009-06:00

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

Day 318 - You've Gotta Walk that Lonesome Valley...

2009-02-11T12:00:00.000-06:00

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 mach 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.

Day 316 - Part Time Passion

2009-02-10T18:42:00.002-06:00

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

Day 315 - Good Day Sunshine

2009-02-09T22:39:00.005-06:00

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.

Day 314 - Sheep and Goats

2009-02-07T20:07:00.013-06:00

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

Day 308 - It's Not Too Late, Brothers and Sisters

2009-02-01T13:00:00.000-06:00

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.

Day 303 - Mrs. Iola's Home

2009-01-27T19:08:00.000-06:00

Sometimes we get to have a little fun. One of the times is a tear down. While a demolition can be dangerous, when it is done carefully, tearing out walls and wielding a sledge has a little satisfaction to it. Sometimes the story doesn't.

We got a call from a daughter who asked us if we could help them out in Vancleave. It seems the house her mother, Mrs. Iola, lived in had become too decrepit after Katrina for an elderly widow. The new tin roof never sealed right and they had found someone in North Mississippi who would sell them a modular home and install it if they could prepare the site. She asked could we tear down the old homestead for them?

I traveled out and found a sixty year old house, originally two or three rooms, with added several rooms and porches. There was gross signs of termite damage, a lot of leaks in the roof and, shall I say, a lot of airy rooms. Hardly the place for a woman in her eighties to be living.

I looked around, many of the brick pilings were severely weathered and missing bricks. I was amazed it was standing. Even so you could see the massive true 6x6 rough cut long timbers used for the sills, though the splices look iffy. (If you've read any Faulkner you may remember this part of Mississippi was originally virgin pine forest, massive trees. Even sixty years ago it was common to see these large timbers.)

So I told the daughter in mid-January when we had volunteers we'd be out to tear it down so she could purchase and install the modular home before the February deadline to purchase. We arranged for a dumpster to be on site and as soon as our new friends from Stillwater, MN and Wisconsin arrived, we formed a team and headed for the house. I ensured water, electricity and gas were disconnected, and we had plenty of hard hats.

The first thing we noticed on the rear of the house is that Mrs. Iola's son had partially dismantled the dining room. No problem, we just finished that work.

The best demolition method (in absence of a bulldozer) after ensuring all utilities are disconnected is to start with the roof and then the roof rafters, Pull the siding, save any valuable or useful doors, fixtures, and overlooked belongings and bring down the walls.

In this case we decided to go ahead and pull down the bathroom since it was an added structure.

By the second day we had most of the tin roof removed.

We started the week with lows in the 40's and highs in the fifties, pretty nice and with the sun a little outdoor picnic for lunch hit the spot! We had a fire out back where the son was burning lumber too ruined to save and by Wednesday when the temperatures were dropping, that too came in handy.

We found some surprises in the attic, Mrs. Iola was lucky neither she or her children were harmed by a fire started by badly spliced wiring! When you read about old homes catching fire, think about things like this.

We found one other remarkable thing in the attic, the bassinet used to bring Mrs. Iola's children home from birthing. One of our volunteers told us it was the identical bassinet her mother used to bring her home!

By Wednesday we had all the roof removed and all the siding, it was pretty clear we would be done on Thursday.

Before we brought down the walls, I had to go through the house with my camera. On the living room wall by the back door where the phone had laid I found the old message board and address book. There is a lot of history in the house, I can only imagine what dreadful thing happened on 9/11/72 in L'ville...

At this point on Wednesday all the siding is stripped and we really only have to knock down the rafters and pull down the walls.

Thursday only the concrete and brick piers, and piles of lumber were left which the son was using to build a shed out back to keep Mrs. Iola's belongings until the new home is set up.

Our crew leader, Mike, and others had the idea to take pieces of siding and rip it to make seven picture frames, replicate an old photograph of Mrs. Iola and her late husband and give a frame to each daughter or son and to Mrs. Iola. The picture for Mrs. Iola, standing next to Mike in front of the daughter's home rests on the railing.

So we have a happy ending - so I thought until last Monday. I was buying building supplies in Lowes for an Orange Grove client when I received a call from Mrs. Iola's daughter. She apologized profusely for missing us on our last day there and we talked a while. She told me that when they went up to buy the modular home, the man had already sold it even though he promised to hold it. It was a very good deal financially that they barely could make. They may not have enough money to buy another. The daughter told me she doesn't have the heart to tell Ms. Iola the modular home was lost; they already had worried much over Ms. Iola's anxiety about seeing the home he husband built and she had lived in for sixty years go down. She said they don't know what to do except they would keep on paying for help since that had gotten them this far.

Day 298 - One Small Step

2009-01-22T19:09:00.000-06:00

Today I took one small step towards big change in my future. Actually it was a big step assisted by all my friends.

I am in Chattanooga. I traveled up from Gulfport yesterday so I could meet today with my session liaison, Jennifer Genovesi, and travel together to Harriman, Tennessee to met with the Committee on Care of Church Professionals (CPM). The purpose of the interview is an “examination” to evaluate my request for admission to the status of Inquirer, the second formal step in the Presbyterian Church towards entry to the ministry of “word and sacrament.”

My trip had been already a comedy of miscues. I left Gulfport about 1:30PM (Central Daylight Time), about an hour and a half late because I lingered in my office working on financial receipts and talking with staff who were going to a client’s house to work in my absence. It is a seven hour drive and I wanted to get in an early hour, about 8PM Eastern Daylight Time in order to go over all my paperwork in advance of the meeting on Thursday.

I set my ipod up in the truck and was listening to a shuffle through my library on my ride. After about 45 minutes driving I heard a musical riff that I was certain was my cell phone. I reached over to the seat where I normally place it and…it wasn’t there. It must have slipped behind my seat. I pull over at the first convenient place and search the truck…nothing.

I think for a while, do I go back and find it in my RV or just drive on? I’m about 50 miles out of Gulfport and decide since I’m going to be in Chattanooga for the rest of the weekend and hardly a day goes by that I do not get several calls from a home owner or staff person about something – I need that phone. So I turn around and head back down US49 for Gulfport, not believing I’ve done this, it will cause me at least an hour and a half delay.

On the way back I run through my steps before I left my RV. That phone must be in the truck. I pull over at the first convenient spot and search again , everywhere– no phone. I face the music and drive all the way back to Gulfport. The phone is in my TV cabinet with my old personal cell phone. I must have checked that phone and put my other one down to do it. Rats!

So I start again. Four and one-half hours later and two hours behind my desired schedule I get to Birmingham (the blessing now, at least I missed the rush hour traffic and was able to go straight through on I-59 rather than the longer loop around town). I’ve got a headache and am hungry so I stop at a Subway that I visit some times on my way down. Rather than taking my sub with me and trying to eat and drive, I decide to be cool and eat in the shop.

When I leave I drive down to the entrance ramps and turn left as usual on my trip down. Unfortunately as I approach the Birmingham Airport twenty miles later I realize I’m heading south, not north. Rats!

So I pull up to my home about 11:30PM, disgusted and somewhat embarrassed.

None the less, the interview went quite well, we had a very good series of questions and answers that covered the waterfront from baptism to writing to choice of seminary (I’ll share some with you later) and the Committee welcomed me into the Inquirer status.

Then we head back for Chattanooga, deciding to try the I-40/I-75 route rather than the US27 route through Dayton (remember the Scopes Monkey Trial?) to see which is shorter. Unbeknownst to me because I’m pretty high on having gotten to this point and Jen and are talking up a storm over it, when we get to the I-40 ramp we take I-40W towards Nashville rather than I-40E towards Knoxville. Fifty miles later we realize our mistake. Sheepishly and sufficiently chastened, we turn around and head for home arriving about an hour-plus later than planned.

Still it has been a great day, the questions in my interview were particularly constructive, and still a little daunted, I move on towards the future, whatever it beholds.

I send along a word of thanks to all my unnamed friends who have made my life so rich and encouraged me knowingly or not. Keep me in your prayers.

Peace

Day 290 - The Poor Among Us

2009-01-14T20:52:00.001-06:00

My dear friend Heather over at Lagniappe Church in Bay St. Louis (who often makes me think too hard about these things) has written in her blog about the challenge of helping folks she sees who are facing hard times, utility cut-off, overdue rent and the like and asking for help from the church. She talked about James1:27: "...that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress..." but she could have chosen Isaiah 1:16-17 or Deuteronomy, or may other readings of a similar imperative in both the Hebrew and Christian writings that invoke the same responsibility.

Somewhat as a practical justification she mentioned the oft-quoted reply of Jesus in Matthew 26:11 "...you will always have the poor with you." But it serves to read the whole story, verses 6-13. I think she means us to think about this a little harder.

In verses 6-13, rather than simply acknowledging that by God's will there will always be poor among us, could Jesus perhaps have slipped into a little sarcasm to his jealous disciples (since He had always readily quoted Isaiah) by subtly reminding them (and us) or bemoaning our intrinsic failure to heed the teaching of James 1:27, or Isaiah 1:16-17, or the Beatitudes; namely, our failure to follow God's directive to insure there will be no poor is a reflection on our own sinful nature?

Peace

Henry

Day 286 - Dreams

2009-01-10T20:49:00.000-06:00

I usually avoid somewhat familiar quotations, but this quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe partly heard on public radio last week pretty much validates my experience of both success and failure, the more remarkable success being my finding my way to this mission activity in Mississippi:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man(person) could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."

So, "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it."

(Italic insert is mine.)

Day 282 - I'm sending out an SOS...

2009-01-06T19:55:00.000-06:00

Yes, I'm old enough to remember the Police - Roxanne, A little Black Spot on the Sun Today...

Normally I'd just tell you all the stories of need down here and wait for you, but I get the feeling that many people are thinking there isn't much to do in the post-Katrina area. Believe me there is.

Every week new cases come our way:

- Families who were frozen in despair or confusion that now are seeking help,

- Folks who made really bad financial decisions because they never had to manage something like a big insurance check, or were stiffed by bogus contractors,

- Folks who maybe were too proud to ask for help and are self-funding their work but can't carry the load of a full time job, being a father and mother and do their own construction work. (I've been myself there and know how it drains you.)

This is a personal call or help. I have two families in Gulfport and at least one in the Pascagoula area facing removal of their FEMA cottages in between Jan. 31 and March 31 with no good alternatives, and unless we get more help for them in the near term, they will be in dire straights.

I have no volunteers for the last half of January and all of February in the Gulfport area. We have maybe 50 families in our current backlog.

Put together a 5 or 10 person crew, even more if you can, sign up and come on down in the last part of January or any time in February. There is a lot of drywall work, finish plumbing, flooring to do to list a few jobs. You will enjoy it. This is your chance to be, not the Police, but one of those unsung, beloved heroes that define us as a people.

What are you doing that is more important?

(We also could use more people in the spring (April-June).)

I look forward to seeing you soon.

Day 280 - Doubt

2009-01-04T11:07:00.000-06:00

I viewed the film, Doubt, New Year’s evening. It is a fascinating and thought provoking study of certitude and ambiguity with a very powerful and unsettling closing scene that should tweak anyone’s conscience and bring a tear of sorrow over our own judgments.

Reviewers opine the film isn’t about its ostensible focus; the struggle of a nun to show a priest has had an inappropriate relationship with an altar boy, but about the clash between new and old ways. While both are certainly subtexts, to me the film delves deeply into the matter of judgment - theological certitude (I use the word theological because in our Christian belief, every judgment is a theological problem), and into the matter of obligatory charity and compassion implicit in our belief.

Though the film occurs in a Catholic milieu, it applies to any church, its members and its leaders, even a Presbyterian one. It is always a failure when a Christian organization uses expediency not compassion to justify its acts. I suspect expediency seems an ostensible safe harbor for “leadership” when the person or persons pointing out a need for compassion and change are viewed as too peripatetic; when a controversy over doing the right thing might slow a manager’s upward mobility in the organization; or when the organization just fears controversy over its actions.

We all are susceptible to it - congregants who try to be faithful but are slaves to their wants and fears; congregations who fear the loss of a minister; a minister who fears the search for a congregation; potentates in the corporate church hierarchy who seem slaves to their position too fearful of change to act as leaders, or who have lost the message of the Gospel that to succeed you must fail to be recognized for it; me writing this critical piece.

“Walking the talk” is a hard row for us to hoe. I guess the whole idea of servant leadership is too alien for us to doubt our prejudices, to trust in God or to eschew a Machiavellian judgment (or appreciate that we have made it).

There are days when I doubt we can find financial resources to replace a home of a seventy-eight year old woman living in a mold-filled mobile home, or the volunteer labor to get a mother, husband and child back into their house after three years living apart. Some days relief organizations bring four or five (or twenty) cases to me asking for our construction help but my doubt of how long we will be allowed to stay and when we will have volunteers keeps me from shouting, “Yes we will help.”

But when we do manage to overcome the seduction of doubt – how sweet it is!

Day 270 - Christmas Day

2008-12-25T02:20:00.000-06:00

I "spent" Christmas Eve in Chattanooga. On one hand my activity that day brought home how much I've (we've?) lost sight of what we celebrate. I waited until Tuesday to start shopping (not that it matters much since my budget for purchased gifts is quite 'modest' these days). The stores all had 50% reductions or more since so little money is being spent, except WalMart whose parking lot was packed almost completely with parked cars.

Fortunately, when I went to Thomas's (my older son) graduation (cum laude) I brought my camera. Also fortunately I brought my camera to Ship Island last summer, and also to a client's home and got some pretty good photographs. I purchased some frames for 50% off at Hobby Lobby along with some matting board and made some prints at Wolf Camera. So, after a few hours composing, cutting and trimming I managed several mounted prints, all good gifts ( in my thinking and hopefully in theirs) for the people in my life that mean something to me.

On the other hand, the Christmas Eve service at Northside reminded me of what is so good about God's gifts. We had a good service, I heard many of my younger son's friends read the Christmas story, saw Rachel a seminary student who asked if I'd made up my mind about Union PSCE. All I can say to her is I've done my part with all the paperwork to three seminaries and our presbytery, and soon, I hope, all I have to do is wait and contemplate what decisions (that I know will be hard) lie before me of what I am going to do. The only bittersweet things of the service was I didn't see Terry, Russell's erstwhile, proxy mom in his teen years to whom I owe much; and this was JoeB Martin IV's last service before he leaves for Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church in Sandy Springs, aka, Atlanta. JoeB is a good friend who does not let me forget my gifts and obligations.

God is good. While I'm writing this entry on Christmas day, shortly after midnight, my Ipod shuffle is playing a song from Messenger, a Christian rock group whose lead vocalist is a friend of mine in Vermont. Search for them on the web. Also, I got four Christmas best wishes e-mail, from the vocalist, from Joe K in Pearlington and from some of my associates who stayed in Gulfport for Christmas.

So friends, let's celebrate the joy of who we honor today and consider Simeon's song. Simeon was a devote man who would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ, a man who knew by the Holy Spirit what would unfold:

"Lord now let thy servant go in peace according to your word,
for I have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all your people,
a light to those in darkness outside your covenant and to the Glory of Israel.
Behold Mary, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel,
and for a sign that is spoken against that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.
A sword will pierce through your own soul also."
(my paraphrase of Luke 2:25-35, RSV)

Do good to a stranger and remember the two greater commandments. Grace to you all and have a joyful and safe Christmas Day.

Henry

Day 268 - The Fire in My Bosom Burns My Clothes (A Christmas Story)

2008-12-23T02:43:00.000-06:00

Henry Paris, December 23, 2008 (all rights reserved) revised Day 194 blog

I can read Job as a presage of Christmas, as an Advent story:

The Innocent stands on the street at the entrance to the building listening to the noise and hurrah within but is not quite able to make out what is said. Not only is he not welcome inside, he is forbidden entry. Yet, he clings to his inner confidence of who resides inside.

Two men come out of the building walking in a deliberate pace. They are engaged in an animated, angry complaint and brush by the Innocent, pushing him aside as one says to the other, “I’m tired of waiting, I doubt this thing is ever going to get started. I’m going home. This is pointless.”

Regardless of the danger, The Innocent decides to enter to learn exactly what is not getting started. He walks confidently through the door and finds a spot on the low wall behind the top row of the central aisle that leads down to the stage. He leans forward on the wall with his elbows and watches and listens.

The crowd is restive. The building is full. It is hot, hazy or smoky, the light is not very good and everyone is sweaty and uncomfortable.

The Innocent realizes previously a series of speakers seated at the front have mounted the stage and warmed up the crowd, this must have been the noise he heard when he was outside on the street. Now, two more great men stand to speak and proclaim great hope for the future and woe to the crowd for its behavior. The person leading the ceremony names the next, Jeremiah, the Innocent thinks he hears. This speaker quotes the words of THE LORD to the crowd, “I am sick of your sacrifices, your burnt offerings; why are you not caring for the poor, freeing the captives and honoring the stranger in your land? Circumcise your heart to me lest my wrath go forth like fire!”

At these strange words the noise level of the crowd drops quite noticeably. The speaker had hardly finished speaking when a voice in the crowd shouted from the other side of the hall echoes, “Thou art my King and my God who ordained victories for Jacob, through you we push down our foes, for in our own strength we cannot trust and we continually give thanks to you; yet you have cast us off and abased us, made us a laughingstock among the peoples of the world. Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our oppression? Rise up and come to our help in the name of your steadfast love!”

Then another voice from the rear of the auditorium to the right of the Innocent shouts back, “Can a man carry fire in his bosom and his clothes not get burned? Wise men lay up knowledge, but the babbling fool brings ruin near.”

While all this is happening, the Innocent watches as who appears to be the final speaker harangues the crowd. Many faces among the crowd redden with anger and frustration at this speaker’s words. Shaking fists are raised. A renewed chorus of shouts, “Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” rain about this final speaker, the insane one named Ezekiel, as he steps down from the stage defiantly and walks towards his seat in the front row inwardly smiling while dodging fists from patrons nearby and objects thrown at him from the crowd afar.

Finally the crowd’s shouting diminishes. Suddenly a deafening sound from nowhere and everywhere as if it were a whirlwind forming a voice echoes in the hall, “I thought I would pour out my wrath upon you and spend my anger against you in the wilderness. But, I withheld my hand and acted for the sake of my name, that I would not be profaned in the sight of the nations in whose sight I brought you out. Moreover, I gave you statutes that were not good and ordinances by which you could not live; and I defiled you through your own gifts by demanding you offer to the fire all your first born so I might horrify you, so you will know I AM THE LORD.”

The crowd turns into angry pandemonium and the organizers panic. They try to keep control of the proceedings by hurrying the anonymous announcer of the fight onto the stage with microphone in hand. He begins, "Gentlemen, in one corner we will have The Innocent standing in for the goodness and kindness of God and human virtue. In the other corner we will have his Adversary standing in defense of the Psalms (especially the 44th), and wisdom of Proverbs.

The noise of the crowd increases. Out in the rear seats a heckler with “King Lear” written across the front of his baseball hat sputters at this spectacle and shouts in a strong bass voice, “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport."

In the wings off stage-right, The One called God smiles with a self-satisfied knowledge and casts his gamble with The Adversary who is standing on stage-left. The Innocent, who in actuality is a stranger from another land, has learned of this God and has come to love and honor Him more greatly than his people in this audience. The Innocent standing far in the rear listens but the noise and pandemonium drown out the words from the stage. He stands erect and moves to the center of the aisle that leads down to the stage to better hear the discourse. One of the organizers looks up at the motion and recognizes the man. He bids his fellows to drag The Innocent to the stage, now converted to a ring for the fight.

The Adversary considers his wager and taunts The One, ”Of what value is faith if practiced only for reward?” He leaves the building, smiling with a self-satisfied knowledge.

Thirteen rounds later the Innocent is no more an innocent but a beaten, defeated man who still fights to deny his newly found knowledge that there can be no assurance of reward for the loyal servant; that this God can do ill to a good man. Yet he still clings to his faith in God, even with the knowledge that he has unleashed the crowd to splay and kill his family and burnt his home and possessions. All this carnage at God’s instigation by a wager with…can it be Himself? Cowering, fearful and trapped, the Innocent clings to that faith even though his Adversary has broken his body.

Now, the organizers from the ring drag the Innocent into the wings, bloodied and diseased. As they pass behind the curtain on stage-left, The Innocent turns his head and shouts across the stage to The One standing there that this cannot be without cause and demands of the Adversary, the Wrath of God, to explain what ill the Innocent has done to merit this defeat.

Unaware a nearby microphone is still turned on, The Gambler still stands in the wings of stage-right stunned, not by this nothing’s words, but that he has allowed this horribly cruel and capricious thing of his Own to unfold. A tear rolls down the cheek of The Gambler as the Innocent demands this explanation; but as fast as the tear forms, an impulse of unbounded fury rises in his chest. He shouts with a rage so intense that it shakes the walls and roof of the entire building so strongly bits of plaster fall down on the crowd,” It is so because I wanted it so!”

This final fury cows the Innocent lying on the floor. He is too terrified and too devastated to look directly at The Adversary and question again boldly why this ill-made reward for goodness results only from His capriciousness. The Innocent is determined however to hazard a very quietly and a very carefully crafted final acknowledgement, “I now see You for who You are and can only fear for us all.”

The crowd has watched this one-sided beating unfold and now most eyes of the crowd stare stunned at the empty stage, they are staggered, ears listening to this argument and the veiled resistance of the beaten Innocent coming from the PA system.

People stand uneasily. Finally those towards the rear begin to file out. As they leave, a woman waiting at the rear turns to her husband and grabs his arm tightly. She whispers, “This can’t be it. This can’t be all there is, can it? Is this it?” The husband struggles for some assuring words, finally muttering to his wife under his breath, “No, it can’t be. There must be hope for reward.” Another fellow in the departing crowd who hears the man’s reply to his wife says, “Hey, don’t be too zealous, or too rowdy, find the middle ground. Don’t rock the boat or you’ll get stepped on.”

There in the wings the Innocent struggles to his feet and the Gambler stands in silence. Both are too uncomfortable to look at each other, for their misery is great. Both are devastated by what has unfolded. They squirm in the pain of self-acknowledgement, the Gambler in recognition of who He is, the Innocent in sullen, submissive recognition of who God is. Finally The Gambler turns to leave, holding the fight’s purse, a bag of coins. As he passes the Innocent Man, he tosses the bag of coins at the Innocent’s feet along with another equally sized bag. The One speaks tenderly, “I AM my Word. I will not restore your family but I remember Second Isaiah’s words, today I repent; your fortune shall be restored. You shall receive double compensation. Now, I must go away to think of what we have done here today.” He bows his head and yet even though in his repentance his anger is kindled against the crowd, still he relents.

He will speak no more for 500 years, when at last he will decide finally enough is enough. He will come to show to both the crowd and The Innocent’s people by way of an inexplicable Supreme Sacrifice, “I do love you all as I love Myself. I do forgive and I do repent for you are a part of me. Truly, no more shall death have its sting. The Adversary is defeated.”

Have a joyful Christmas – Amen.

Day 266 - Sundogs

2008-12-21T22:06:00.000-06:00

This afternoon about 4:15, as I approached the entrance ramp to I-10 off US49 in Gulfport to drive over to D’iberville on a Christmas gift delivery from my church (Northside Presbyterian in Chattanooga) out of Gulfport I looked towards the setting Sun. The sky was magnificent this evening, a lot of high clouds and an Alaska Express blowing down and just brushing us.

There low in the sky were two sun dogs, The southernmost one was unusual. It spanned an arc of about twenty-thirty degrees partly encircling the Sun.

Sun dogs are bright faux-suns displaced left or right, and perpendicularly above or below the sun. There can be as many as four or as few as one, in extreme cases they turn into ring around the sun much like the halo often observed around he moon. Even though they occur everywhere since they rely only upon the confluence of a few physical factors such as a relatively clear sky with enough with high clouds containing ice crystals between the viewer and the Sun, I'm always fascinated by sun dogs. I'll leave it to my brother, the atmospheric scientist to explain them in detail, or google the web.

I believe in some of the southwest Indian lore, (Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo or Zuni) the appearance of sundogs is auspicious. My brother, the atmospheric scientist in the family spent timeout west and told me about it. I’ll forego the whole explanation about ice crystals, their orientation and the like.

In these few days before Christmas, some auspicious events would be welcome because, you see, I’ve been working alone on a house in Gulfport. We do not have any volunteers until January 10, and I have no work site manager at the moment.

It’s Mr. Percy’s house. The good news is last Friday morning the city gave us a go on the rough-in inspection and we can install insulation and drywall now. I planned to get the insulation over there by noon and start installing. Unfortunately the guy responsible for the trailers left me a derelict. It took the better part of two hours for me to repair temporarily a shade tree mechanic’s job on its wiring so brake and tail lights worked. (Yes, I could chew nails.) I loaded up the derelict with insulation and delivered it to the house. With this puny trailer it took two trips and I had to unload it all by myself.

I have some interest in getting the insulation installed and the drywall up. Mr. Percy’s dear wife is about worn out staying with her son and wants to get into the house soon. She told me the last time I saw here over at the house that she was going to go to Chattanooga with me and stay at my house until hers was done. When I hear her say “Mr. Henry…” I look for her holding a suitcase.

I feel badly about it but I’m ready for a break today and head to Chattanooga. It hurts me to leave Mr. Percy, his wife and son to do all the work with the insulation themselves, but my plan to try to get the drywall to the house tomorrow is compromised by that little crippled 8 foot trailer. I may end up doing multiple runs using my truck next week, if Mr. Percy has someone there to help unload it. I’ll get the drywall jack over there so they can tackle the ceilings. Maybe by the time I return Sunday after Christmas they will be ready for the drywall and I’ll be ready to work on it with them.

Tuesday morning I plan to be on the road again. Maybe I’ll get to a Christmas story before the day comes. Regardless, Merry Christmas to all!

Day 254 - More Nails

2008-12-09T22:07:00.000-06:00

Today we installed 2x12's and supporting piers as a temporary solution to the crushing girders of our home in Pearlington that is up on 13 foot piers. It took Michael, Julia, Jessi and I about four hours.

We started about 9:30AM. I decided to add about one-eighth to one-quarter inch to the height of the temporary piers because the girders are so crushed. This worked out fine, we had a little struggle with the first pier but by 1:30PM we were packing up our tools to leave.

After a quick bite to eat, Michael and I went over to Bay St. Louis to look at a home that took on about three or so feet of water from Katrina. It's an interesting home, had 3/4 inch heart pine paneling but the whole interior needs work. The woman that lives there had a bad day, troubles with teenage daughter and just the press of all this with little resources to repair. Michael and I talked to her about how we could redo the interior and accommodate her children; then we took some basic measurements.

I dropped Mike off at the Village and headed back. By the time I drove into the Village in Gulfport, Mike was on the phone. Our homeowner had tried to go into his unfinished house on the piers for some reason. The doors (over the girder we supported and lifted a smidgeon) are jammed and he can't open them.

Mike will go by tomorrow and see if he can get them open. I know the cause is the comic book or less thickness we raised the broken girder. I'd just as soon leave it as-is until the professional engineer gives me his recommended repair, but I know that door is going to be a stone in the home owner's shoe until is open. We can't really do any serious work in the house until then. If we hang cabinets, put down floor or tile in the baths, we risk cracking it when we do the final repair.

The big problem is that everyone is being pressed by the State to give up their MEMA (Mississippi Emergency Management Agency) cottages by March. I hear it from almost all our clients. I'm sure there are some who are just doing nothing but living in the cottage but many are working hard to get into homes. The State is solving a delicate problem with a sledge hammer, in my opinion.

Day 251 - Chewing Nails

2008-12-06T21:15:00.000-06:00

Well, the saga of two homes in Pearlington continues. The owners of both homes are suffering from what in my opinion is purely thievery by contractors. Perhaps I should not be so harsh with one of them, he may just be uninformed and lacking good sense. How he responds to the recommended repair I obtain will tell the tale.

These two stories show you an ugly side of humanity. They show how easy it is for the trusting soul to be duped and mis-spend a lot, emphasis, a lot of money.

Case 1 is a new home built up on piers, about twelve-thirteen feet. It is a beautiful house partly funded by some of our volunteers. After we returned from Gustav and began inspecting the house with the help of our great New York City team we realized the supporting girders under the exterior load bearing exterior walls are crushing! Why?

A close look shows that the builder, using very strong, engineered truss-girders for the floor, extended them out to where the exterior load bearing beams should be. Rather that using the called out doubled 2x12 LVL's (laminated veneer lumber) for the exterior load girder he just used a single floor truss. On top of that, on both ends of the house, he improperly cut one of the girders which weakens them seriously.

A single girder constructed of 2x4’s is holding the entire load bearing exterior walls, essentially at least half the entire load of the house. Both front and rear girders are crushing slowly. The New York team, bless them, installed a temporary 2x12 support beam under the crushing girders that provides some arresting relief.

I decided not to hazard a self-generated solution but to bring in a PE (professional engineer) for formal assessment and recommendation for repair. While he was there we discovered not only verification of our assessment of the seriousness of the damage, but that the builder had installed some girders upside down with the surface clearly labeled TOP in large black letters facing down!

Afterwards, I received a concerned call from the PE firm asking that we immediately also install some temporary 4x4 piers under the 2x12 along with a second 2x12 until they can provide a formal solution. We will do that Monday or Tuesday, as soon as I get back to the coast.

Talking with the owner I find the builder was not even a licensed contractor, he was using another contractor's number. I think he is in jail now. Great, we will get no relief from him.

I've written a little about Case 2 earlier. Perhaps this situation is even worse. The husband has been quite ill most of the last six months and has not been able even to provide comments.

The wife of the owner has been living on site and engaging various "contractors" to do plumbing, build exterior porch roofs and re-roof the house. I find it hard to describe these “contractors” as any thing more than “good old boys” but even the term “good” tries one’s patience.

A couple of months ago I had visited and assessed the cost to rebuild this home and asked, if not begged the lady not to engage contractors without checking with me until we got the funding situation clarified. Then Gustav came and went. A month ago I drive up and see that she has paid a man to put on a new roof and a local "handy man" to build an extensive porch roof around three of the four sides of the house.

As I looked from the road I saw the newly shingled roof still had a saddleback look, plus the porch roof has such a low pitch the building code (and instructions on roofing) say no way to a shingled roof. On top of that, from the road it is clear that the porch roof on the north side has a negative slope, running water towards the house.

No roofer in his right mind would put a roof on this house in this condition except to bleed money from the home owner. The whole roof is going to have to be removed to repair the damage.

But the problem is deeper. This "handyman" built the roof by attaching the roof rafters to the fascia boards on the existing roof! Furthermore he employed very large spans using undersized 2x6 rafters and joists. The rafters are bowed and eventually the fascia boards will pull loose and the roof will separate from the house.

The problem grows even deeper. As I inspected the gabled porch roof on the south side of the house I realize he has built a gabled roof without employing any truss structure, just pairs of 2x6 rafters span the space, their ends tied into one of the 2x6 rafters that is itself tied to the fasica boards on one end and sitting on an exterior vertical post on the other end. The unsupported gable rafters are opening up laterally by pushing that 2x6 off the post, it has less than another inch to go.

I could ramble on more technical detail about remaining problems associated with this porch roof, the roofing job on the house and the crummy way these two local boy have abused this woman. But I will not. I imagine she has spent more on the house than would be required to build from scratch.

I'm expecting the PE to validate my thinking, the only solution is to tear off the porch roof and the roofing and redo the whole darn thing. I'm guessing it is going to be expensive.

I remember the PE’s question. “What do you guys do down here, go around and fix these kind of bad construction jobs?” I didn’t say yes, but for a lot of our clients that is the appropriate answer. Disaster brings out the best and the worst in people.

It was all I could do to talk to her and her husband about this with the PE after we finished our inspection. I finally repeated what I'd begged earlier, "Please don't let Mr. H do any more work on this house."

Once I have the PE assessment and solution in hand I intend to talk to Mr. H. Then we will see what manner of integrity he has.

I remember an infrequently used, and therefore effectively imprinted usage of my mother. I always thought it a remarkable expression for the context she used it. It is certainly apropos here.

These guys make me so mad I could chew nails.

Day 246 - Good Gifts

2008-12-01T20:41:00.000-06:00

The last week has been one for gifts.

We had a new truck to pick up in Louisville, the first “gift.” It is needed to pull some equipment to Texas. I flew up to Louisville and drove it back, stopping in Chattanooga on the way back to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with my mother, brother & wife and my sons, the second gift. I opened a lot of old mail including some quarterly statements on my IRA showing that there are only two positions to hold in the market right now, cash and fetal. Then the fourth gift came over two days. It turned out that somewhere in all that lurked a cold virus and it slowly picked off my eldest son early Thursday, them my youngest son early Friday, then his mother late Friday, and finally on Friday night it got me.

That virus was an interesting gift. It slowed me down so much I spent most of Friday evening, all day Saturday completing some seminary applications I’ve been working on, the fifth gift. Like a lot of things, it keeps going and going. I still have a lot of congestion. I was able to attend the service at Northside and saw a lot of old friends, and listened to one of JoeB’s last sermons at Northside.

On the way down in Mississippi I picked up the seventh gift, a religious FM station and listened to most of the complete performance of Handel’s Messiah (the soprano wasn’t as good as some I’ve heard). When I arrived back in Gulfport early Sunday evening I looked in the mail and found the next gift, a package from our church team in Uniontown, PA – a Pittsburgh Tee-shirt with all the colloquial tidbits that make it such a nice town: aht, babushka, blitzburgh, chipped ham, chitchat, dahntahn, hans, iron (as in city beer), jaggers, jumbo, jynt igle (the local supermarket), keller, nebby, pensivania, picksburgh (a favorite learned by my eldest son in his formative years), pop, sammitch, E’sliberty, spicket, stillers, stillmill, telepole, the burgh, the mon, the point, worsh, yins(or youns).

I got a call from some friends in Atlanta, the ninth, always a nice gift, and upon opening my e-mail, a tenth gift, a reply to one of my missives from a good friend, we’ll call her “H.”

Who says all gifts have to be exotic or munificent to be good? I had a nice conversation about new strategies in Mississippi while in Louisville, it was interesting to drive a Ford diesel, the virus slowed me down, a good thing (and makes me appreciate good health). I got to visit with my family. Seeing the state of my savings made me think hard about letting today’s troubles be enough. I had the pleasure to listen to Handel, a gift jogged some nice old memories about Pittsburgh, and I heard from a friend.

And this Thursday, though I have to make the drive again, I’ll hear my eldest son’s recital in the evening, then turn around the following weekend and do it again to see him graduate, giving me my twelve gifts before Christmas. So, from where do all good gifts come?

Be thankful for what you receive.

Day 233 - Seven Weeks of Work

2008-11-18T19:34:00.000-06:00

I took the time to do a retrospective of our work this Fall. I just looked at our work at Orange Grove (Gulfport) where we work on homes from Pascagoula to Pass Christian, MS. This fall we housed and utilized about 216 volunteers over seven weeks.

I tally that we have completed construction work on thirteen homes and taken a large step on two others. Thirteen families are now in homes where there is no longer worry over leaking roofs, rotting floors or window frames. They have homes where small children now sleep in "civilized" conditions, they actually have a bedroom with beds and can bathe in a shower or tub in a functioning bathroom. FEMA has been called to collect trailers, the sign of a completed job.

All this just in the eastern part of Mississippi. We have had churches from Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Arkansas, among others. We are so grateful. Thank you all.

I must also mention in this eastern area of Mississippi that we have an unabated flow of families and individuals who are in dire need of help as a result of damage from Katrina.

We still need your help. We have a home where there is a father with two pre-school and elementary school-aged children that a still living in a trailer while their home stands unlivable. We have the home of an elderly couple that I am desperate to get into their home by Christmas, but I have no volunteers. I may spend much of the early weeks of December hanging drywall with one of my work-site managers.

Would you consider a great Christmas gift, to forgo the chestnuts by the fire, sipped spiced cider and the gaiety of a decorated fir with wrapped presents underneath to come to Orange Grove or Pearlington in December and help us give someone a true Christmas present, the gift of love? Why can't we double that accomplishment of thirteen homes?

We have plenty of room for volunteers between now and March.

I'll try to get you a summary of our work in Pearlington in the next few days.

Day 226 - Dilemma

2008-11-10T21:33:00.001-06:00

Well, the last few days have been a mixed bag.

First, one of the more unbelievable Presidential elections transpired six days ago. One that will most probably transform this country if we can do it before sliding back into that old cynicism that you can’t change the system.

Then, I had to use my four wheel drive twice already to get out of a ditch (in a truck whose manufacturer I do not prefer over my brother’s Dodge RAM).

Then, dear friends who have been with PDA as long as me departed for new beginnings (not a bad thing I keep telling myself).

Then, tumultuous challenges for staffing surge as strongly as ever.

Then, the imperative to aid those widows, homeless and poor sounds as fresh today as it did two millennia ago. A tragic circumstance with a homeowner repeats the past. What a week.

Here it is:

My friend Heather (see her blog: http://seektheking-pda.blogspot.com/) has been the village manager at Pearlington since last spring. She finally decided to follow the decision of Jeremy, also a good friend and who was the work site manager, to move on to the mission of the Lagniappe Presbyterian Church in Waveland.

It’s a really strong church with a committed construction effort similar to PDA’s. The members I’ve met are very gracious, have offered equipment and labor to pull our Pearlington pods out of the swamp after Gustav and Ike washed them into it. Theirs is a PCA church, but our collaborative effort shows thus far dogma can often just be a drag on friendship and fellowship when we are following a Call.

It really hurts to see Heather go, she has been one of our best managers and has a heart in the right place; the kind of person I call a “keeper.” I know her choice was hard and she struggled not only with this decision, but the greater decision of “what am I going to do next?” I’ll posit that she will find herself in seminary sooner or later.

In her next to last post she wondered, “I have sometimes joked that I wish God would post a big neon sign for me, to communicate His will.” I can only say Heather, walk the road and you’ll find the way. Or, as someone said, “If you are going to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.”

Stay close Heather, we all miss you.

Today I relived essentially a previous experience. (If you are reading these posts, you will know which one.) This repetition is an inexcusable one that on one hand makes me mad that some power repeated it and on the other makes me sad that we as a people have allowed it.

The e-mail from the case worker said simply, “Henry will you check on this case? This woman is really fearful about winter. She has no heat and has holes in her floor.”

By now, you know that I did.

I drove the twenty minutes or so to get to her home. It is out westward on I-10 towards Bay Saint Louis, not quite there, but close. I took an exit south and followed a winding road that my Google Map described, took the next turn and wandered a mile or so down a narrow road until I saw the house number on the mail box on the roadside.

There stood another mobile home, smaller, but clearly of a 1980’s vintage like the one I found in the north county a few months back. I knew before I even knocked on the door what I would find. With that air of foreboding, I knocked.

An elderly woman opened the door.

“Hi, are you Mrs. Mary Brooks? I’m Henry Paris of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Your case manager asked me to drop by. Do you remember my call?

She replies, “Yes,” in a coarse, faint whisper. She can only talk in a hoarse, raspy voice. An oxygen dispenser sits on the table in her living room.

“Come on in. Let me show you. Oh! I’m so worried, those idiots left me with a half-done kitchen, look at this floor, see the hole.”

There is a hole about eight or ten inches wide covered with duct tape. The kitchen has new appliances but the bar is only partially finished. The floors of this mobile home are clearly rotted. The roof sags and the roof leaks. There is evidence of mold.

“Come on, look at the living room. Over here by the TV, see how the floor gives.

“I am so afraid, I don’t have any heat except these space heaters. When I run them the circuit breakers trip. I can smell burning insulation.”

Standing in the door of the bathroom I see the floor vent is open to the ground. There is no AC ductwork here either. She leads me into her bedroom. There sits another duct open to the ground.

In a rain of cursing she rasps, “I paid that no good something $12,000 and he promised he would repair the floors and the roof, but he just disappeared.

“Look at the ceiling over on the wall next to my bed, water pours in every time it rains.

“My house was washed away by Katrina; it is completely gone. We got about twenty feet of water here. Afterwards I bought this mobile home for $4,000. My daughter said this was great, she helped me paint it and said it was a great deal."

“Mrs. Mary, how long have you lived here? When did you get this mobile home? Didn’t you have a FEMA trailer?”

“Yes I had a FEMA trailer first but they took it way.”

“Took it away? I don’t understand.”

“Well, they gave me $39,000 for a new home. I paid this mobile home dealer $20,000 for a mobile home but he hasn’t ever delivered.”

“Mrs. Mary, did you give him a check? Have you filed a criminal complaint?”

“No, I paid him cash. I carried a box with the $39,000 in it. I paid him cash right out of the box.

“I gave my poor son $5,000 to help him with his family. I gave my daughter some, and I gave some to a few others.”

“Mrs. Mary you can’t stay here. Can’t you stay with your son or daughter, or your sister?”

“My son lives in Dothan, AL and has ten kids, he can barely take care of them, hardly me. My daughter is so into drugs she doesn’t even know where she is. My sister will not take me in."

She told me about her chronic degenerative lung disease and her serious bouts of depression that required hospitalization. As we talked she lets on she has substantial mental issues. It explains her volatile emotions, teary then sobbing, later laughing.

She pointed out a small outbuilding, getting very teary again as she told me her boy friend who died two years ago, who she loved so much, used to go out there and stay to get away from her when she got so bad. It was the only time I saw her really laugh, and that only for a few seconds before she lapsed into her teary state again.

I stand there thinking of what I can say or do that will ease her mind, knowing that it is going to be almost impossible to find grant money for her. There is nothing that can be said. She got money to relocate or rebuild and with no one to give her sound advice, she lost it.

She has serious mental health issues and is living in a mobile home with no heat except three space heaters. That is the most dangerous thing you can put in a mobile home.

Isn’t here a Health and Human Services organization in Mississippi? How can her son and daughter just leave her here?

I do the math mentally. She got $30,000 from FEMA, gave her son $5,000, and some to her daughter and a few others, paid $20,000 for a mobile home that wasn’t delivered, bought this mobile home for $4,000 and then paid some would-be carpenter $12,000 to fix it, when the only “fixing” practical is to trash it or burn it and start over. That is more than the $39,000 she got from FEMA.

About a mess like this, my mother said it best:

"It makes me so mad I could chew nails."

But the anger fades as Mrs. Mary’s situation just saddens me and reduces me to impotency. I feel like sitting down on her steps and just crying for her.

It only takes a while working here to come to an accommodation of Mrs. Mary’s dilemma. Mrs. Mary is an icon for everything wrong about this hurricane’s aftermath; about how the State can sacrifice someone like Mrs. Mary in order to rebuild a port or a factory to make more jobs for better tax revenue and industrial growth; about children, about how well we live Christ’s command to help:

“…Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; correct oppression; defend the fatherless; plead for the widow.” (Is 1:16-17)

One either inures oneself to Mrs. Mary’s tragedy, to the pathos of the poor and displaced and to His command; or one gives one’s soul up to the suffering and becomes one with their sorrow…and does something about it.

Peace and Grace

Day 220 - Reflection

2008-11-05T00:06:00.000-06:00

I remember as a young boy riding to school on segregated city buses.

I remember walking in the local five and dime store in Rome, GA, seeing the signs over the water fountains and rest rooms that said “Colored” and “White.”

I remember seeing the pictures in newspaper stories of the fire hoses, of the snarling police dogs straining on leases.

I remember that speech, “I have a dream…”

I remember the news story on TV showing Robert Kennedy lying mortally wounded on the floor of that hotel floor.

I remember the terrible news story about that terrible day in Memphis.

I remember that day when “Grant Park” meant mad-dog police going berserk with clubs against citizens protesting an insane war.

I remember Detroit burning.

I remember that day in Iowa when I thought this is a day just like the one that happened with Jimmy Carter.

I remember so many things, so many events, so many doubts and a cynicism that said a day like this might never come about.

I hear the chant, “Yes we can!”

I think, maybe this time, in reality, the torch has been passed on from one generation to another.

I only can pray that we may be that beacon, that we may be a city on the hill whose light we cannot hide under a basket, that we may be that example of goodness and justice to the world.

I hope that God may bless America, that we will hold true to his tenets.

Day 217 - Old Friends (He who gathered little had no lack)

2008-11-02T12:23:00.000-06:00

The last couple of weeks have been enjoyable. We have had crews from the Arkansas Presbytery, Fifth Ave. PC(NYC), Stillwater, Minnesota, New Bern, NC and Virginia. There were familiar faces in the New Bern group and the Arkansas group. Yesterday evening a crew from the Presbytery of Western North Carolina arrived. A lot of them are from Gastonia.

Many in each of these churches have been down three, four or five times. The last few days we were able to treat the Minnesota folks to some northern weather, lows in the evening have kissed the freezing point or hovered a little above. (I brought in my epiphylum a couple last week.).

One of the Gastonia group came to me this morning to tell me a woman had driven up in a truck and was looking for a place to stay. I went out and found her.

Standing by her truck looking in I noticed her pillow and blanket were in the reclined passenger seat. I asked her how she was doing and her story came out in bits and pieces.

“I drove over from Tallahassee and have no place to stay. “

“What are you doing in Gulfport?”

“I came over to take care of my father over in Van cleave.”

“Can’t you stay with him?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, his wife doesn’t much like me and will not let me stay there.”

“So, how can you take care of your father?”

“I came over to be sure he gets his shots. I slept in my truck last night and I am about frozen. To tell you the truth, I got drunk to warm up last night. I’m looking for a place to warm up and stay just for tonight. I think I have a room tomorrow. Do you have any place warm I could stay for today?”

I could tell she had been drinking from the strong alcohol odor about her. She probably was not in any condition to drive her truck.

“Do you want some coffee? We’ve got some in the dining tent.”

“Sure, that sounds good.”

“What do you want in it?”

“Just black, please.”

She was wiping tears from her eyes when I brought out the cup of coffee and gave it to her.

“Don’t you want something to eat, we have cereal and toast in the tent?”

“I just need a place to cry.”

“Well, come on in the tent and sit, you can warm up.”

She came in and sat down, still crying a little and dabbing her eyes with the paper towel she was holding in the truck.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat? We’ve got toast.”

“That sounds good, I could use some toast and butter.”

I made the toast while I prepared my own to eat with my oatmeal. While she ate her toast and I my oatmeal we talked some more.

“So what brings you to Gulfport?”

“Oh, I used to live here.”

Her story was getting a little confusing so I asked, “I thought you said you came from Tallahassee?”

“No, Pas Christian. When Katrina hit it washed me up past I-10, I treaded water and swam up to the Lutheran emergency center.”

I was having a little difficulty believing all this since I know a little about the surge, but I just listened.

Since it wasn’t wise for her to drive in her condition I thought I might buy an hour or so inviting her to our church service. I went to look for the pastor. Having no luck (I was an hour early, the clocks turned back last night) I returned to the dining tent to see her heading for her car.

“I have to tell you that we don’t really have any good place for you to stay in the Village other than our pods. But, there is a Salvation Army Shelter in Pascagoula that takes in folks that don’t have a place to stay.”

“How far is that about 40 miles or so? No, I don’t guess the gas in this old truck would make it that far.” She got in the truck and said, “ I just wanted to use your facilities.”

She slammed the door and left.

In the tent I bumped into the team leader for the Gastonia group. We talked a little about the homeless issue and how we served the homeless during my time in Atlanta at Central Presbyterian Church. I mentioned that our associate pastor, Kim Richter, had the pastor’s position in Ashville, Westminster Church, I believe. Not only has this person met Kim (he participated in a class she taught in his Presbytery) but he has read a book by her husband, Don.

As I say, it’s a small world, a shrinking denomination, or I’m near some gravitational sinkhole that pulls my past along with me.

Later in our church service today one of the reading was from Second Corinthians (8:8ff) where Paul talked to the poor Macedonian Church. It seems apropos.

“I say this not as a command but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love is also genuine…it is best to complete what you began so that your readiness in desiring is matched by your completing it with what you have. For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable to complete it according to what a man has, not according to what he has not… I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want so that their abundance may supply your want… As it is written, ‘He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack.’”

Peace and Grace

Day 210 - Fathers and Sons I

2008-10-26T00:49:00.001-05:00

Turgenev’s novel wrestled with a different focus than my two stories of fathers and sons. I probably came away from Turgenev with a different idea that the pundits. Turgenev dealt with sin and redemption I suppose. He used the relation of fathers and sons to critique the loss of hope (nihilism) in society. My characters wrestle the obligation of love reflected by the dedication, or obligation, of sons to father and mother only within a world of redemption. Maybe this story does in a strained way follow Turgenev’s tact?

I met Hezekiah, Ruth and their son Joseph early last summer. Our case manager liaison had asked me to visit and determine what the state of the house was in order to determine if we could help. I found more than a house in pretty bad shape. I found a story of love and dedication.

There were photographs on the walls that hearkened back to the 1970’s. On the walls hung images of well dressed mother and father with children. Photographs of smiling, newly wed husband and wife. Another contained a fairly young man in military uniform. There were others of newly graduated high school students; some of grandchildren. All the photographs broadcast a fully lived, rich family life. There was a lot of double-knit leisure suits therefore the photographs surely date to the 1970’s.

The house now was darkened. The limited electric power barely allows a window air conditioning unit. There is an old screw-type fuse box with maybe 60 amp service. They have to use a gas stove and hot water heater because more electric appliances blow the fuses. How many of you remember a fuse box?

The walls and ceiling were water stained. Outside soffits had been repaired but only barely. I learned the water damage came from the severely wind damaged roof by Katrina. Insurance had allowed it to be replaced, but only after a deluge of a lot of water. Both Hezekiah and Ruth have had mold-related illness. Ruth and Hezekiah have had heart attacks.

I met Joseph the son that day. He is probably near my age, maybe ten years younger. He came down to help his parents right after Katrina. He gave up a nice business he had started in Chicago and holds two more menial jobs here in town to do it.

Ruth and Hezekiah had applied and been approved for grant application and were notified by the local long term recovery organization that they were qualified but subsequently they were denied funding by the funding agency. This roller coaster experience happened twice over the last three years. Ruth is beaten up by it. She has given up hope of ever seeing the home repaired, "Yes, Mr. Henry, I'll believe we are going to see this house fixed when its done. We've heard all this so many times before."

We went ahead and applied for grant funding. Our first application was almost denied due to questions about lack of enough income. Luckily we were able to add some critical pieces to the application about the commitment Joseph has towards his parents long term care. Thankfully the grant was approved. It was one of my more recently satisfying moments to call Joseph and tell him we had funding.

Our objective is to strip the walls and flooring, rewire, drywall and refurbish. We will have to cover some of the electrical and HVAC costs but it looks really good. We leaped into the work as fast as we could amass volunteers to the job; building piles of stripped interior out in the yard faster than the dumpster people could keep up. Ohio, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania all helped.

When one spends a lot of time in a home doing this kind of renovation, one learns a lot about family in conversation with the homeowner. Grandparents raised Hezekiah. They lived in this old four room house built of heart pine eighty to one hundred years ago. When we stripped the interior of the house down to it studs, we revealed a double fireplace for living room and front bedroom and a second double chimney for what surely was a wood or coal burning kitchen stove and a potbellied stove in the rear bedroom.

The fireplaces had to be the sole source of heat; there is no central air. It is obvious that gas service was installed much later. The gas came because the only electrical service was an old screw-in fuse box with four circuits rated at about 40 or 60 amps total. They couldn’t run an air conditioner and an electric stove at the same time. Forget a washing machine and dryer.

I don’t know about Hezekiah’s parents. I haven’t been with Hezekiah or Joseph at a good time to ask about them. It is a mystery I hope I will resolve later and fill this detail in.

What image I have of the early years is from details from Hezekiah and Ruth, and later, almost accidentally, by Joseph. After we stripped the walls Hezekiah brought Mrs. Ruth by to see the progress. She says she hasn’t seen that old double fireplace since before she and Hezekiah were married. She insists we keep the fireplaces open.

When we began Joseph said he wanted to enlarge the bathroom, to eliminate a short hallway to increase the size of the bath. The bathroom enlargement seemed difficult and unnecessary to us. We would have to change a lot of plumbing and do extra framing generally making the job a little more complicated.

We discussed this with Hezekiah he quickly agreed with us that this adding unnecessary complications. We left that discussion comfortable that we could revert to the old plan of recreating a better bathroom in the same space. That is, until Joseph dropped by after he got off work.

Joseph had a firm objection to our plan to just redo the existing floor plan. He had a clear objective. As he described his ideas his carried a long-range concept for what this home needed to be was obvious.

He talked about how Hezekiah had taken care of his grandparents when they were very ill and not capable of caring for themselves. He said the bathroom had to be bigger with tub/shower separated from sink and vanity so there was room to maneuver. Maneuver what?

“When my grandparents got really sick, my dad took care of them. He had to bathe them when they got so sick they couldn’t do it by themselves."

I realized he was saying that his grandparents lived in their home well after they could manage daily life, after the time when incontinence soiled both bed and parent. They lived into the time where the gentle hands cleansed both parent and child, one physically and the other spiritually.

Joseph talked about this in such a matter-of-fact way. He wanted that bathroom big enough so it could manage a wheelchair and allow him to clean a parent who probably was still enough in control of faculties to be mortified by the events but so thankfully grateful for a loving son to spare them embarrassment of strangers doing the task. They are a close, loving family and the loving intimacy required to do this was so evidently a natural commitment to parents in need present for both Joseph and Hezekiah in their own times.

I realized there is a profound love and commitment in this African-American family; a truly committed love between son and father and mother. I cannot walk away except to feel daunted by this love. A love that I know is absent in some families of of my protégés; a love that cannot but tear at my own insecurity about facing this eventual difficult fate. Will I have the strength to match this love between this son and parents?

Joseph makes me remember my own pain. I remember sitting in a hospital waiting room of an ICU unit, of sitting with my mother and brother; all of talking with my daddy’s brother about an irreversible decision we faced. I remember hearing my voice distantly agreeing with the others, “Yes I agree. We need to do this.”

I remember subsequently sitting on my father’s bedside in the hospital looking at the ventilator tube taped to his mouth, at the bruise and bandage on his head where he had fallen in the hospital room the night before causing an irreversible hemorrhage; of placing my hand on his startlingly cold skin wondering where the blanket was because he had to be cold; of hearing the doctor say there was no hope due to the hemorrhage; of talking to him telling him through tears of how much I loved him hoping he would hear and hoping for some reaction from him, of memories of all the times we all spent together. All these things washed over me while I talked to him in a low voice because I was inexplicably embarrassed by the near presence of the ICU nursing station. I remember that long goodbye as clearly as if it were happening today.

Joseph, a brother in arms stronger than I am. Joseph is an aspiration for us all and an object lesson in the love of father and son.

Day 202 - Tipping points

2008-10-18T22:10:00.000-05:00

How long does a couple live together to get to the point that their common history usurps their past. The point where more of life has been spent in the past than in the future? How long does it take for each little glory, each little intimacy, each little spat and argument to edge out slowly, slowly a step at a time into a common conscious?

Do these little instances draw from some personal, emotional change purse only to grow with interest as they fill a common experience? There must be a tipping point where the past has filled the common cup so much that the rest of life together is as much a reflection of the past as the future.

For the lucky it is only remembered small glories that fill the cup, for the less fortunate it is the spats and arguments that shape the future. For the blessed, they possess a humor that glues all those glories and arguments together in a common treasured experience greater than their separate lives.

Pauline and Larry Brady, a sixty-ish couple, survived Katrina. It looks probably so did their marriage.

Years ago Larry found this house nestled on a high ground near the Pearl River. The house has to be over a hundred years old. Since it was so old and free of any obvious past flood damage, Larry convinced Pauline to buy it. They never worried about hurricanes since the house had this history. They build an addition to it and enjoyed the quiet, pastoral existence of Pearlington until late August 2005.

When we came upon the house it stood unused except to hold boxes and boxes of floor-ravaged possessions of Pauline, Larry and daughter; and that musty smell. Everything was moldy or decaying. When one looks through the boxes there are old paperback books, childhood books, certificates of accomplishment, photographs, rusty tools, toys, almost anything a family might collect over twenty or thirty years of living together.

Our job is to clean out the house and assist Larry and Pauline to refurbish the house into a new home. The first step is work with the homeowner to remove all the unnecessary contents and strip damaged walls.

While we cleaned it out Larry would say, “Let’s get this done before Pauline gets over here. Save that box, put those books over here so we can put them in that storage shed out back.”

Larry agonized over every piece of life we picked up to toss into the pile out on the lawn to wait on the delivery of the dumpster. Larry's decisions were agonizing; each one seemed to erase or save a piece of life.

On other occasions while we cleaned it out Pauline would say, “Let’s get this done before Larry gets over here. Toss that box, put those books over there in your wheel barrow so we can put them in the dumpster pile out front.”

Pauline never thought twice about her decision, her directives to toss those pieces of the past into the pile on the lawn to wait on the delivery of the dumpster had the surety of the mind of an Islamic prince swinging a raised scimitar to decapitate an infidel.

After our crew finished this labor last week, I visited the home today with my two wonderful new work site managers, Jessie and Michael.

“We better call Larry and Pauline before we drop by.”

I fished my cell phone out of its holster and dialed.

A woman’s voice answered, “Hello?”

“Hello Mrs. Brady. This is Henry, we are in the area and wondered if we could drop by and see how the cleanup is going?”

“Who?”

“Henry Paris with PDA. Remember, I came by a few weeks ago.”

“Oh yes. Yes, come on over.”

We were only about a half-mile from the house.

“OK, we will be there is a few minutes.”

As I pulled into their driveway, Larry was walking out beside a newly stacked pile of firewood. He waved hello and walked with a spry step towards us. Larry is the kind of guy who has probably ten or twenty unfinished projects, each a magnificent dream, each easily achievable because the fellow is an engineer, but his list grows far faster than his hands and feet can manage. He plans to redo this house himself. Our job is to keep him from self-destruction and do much of it for him.

He leads us to the house and unlocks the front door. I walk in and am quite impressed. The house is emptied of most of the things that filled every room the last time I was here. We walk through remarking and discussing all the little architectural oddities. The firebrick pad in the rear bedroom and the cutout in the wood wall paneling that indicate an old pot bellied stove must have stood there. We note the fireplace hidden in the wall in the kitchen.

The house itself built of old rough-cut heartwood, even the interior wall paneling. This paneling and the massive cypress girders and joists withstood Katrina’s soaking quite well. There are a few spots of mold to manage, but in Larry’s view, and one I do not entirely oppose, many of the rooms can be salvaged. Pauline on the other hand is on record as saying “Strip it all and put drywall up!”

Again, the questions, over three years old, still lurk below the surface of conversation. As usuaI I ask, “Mr. Brady, did you and Pauline stay behind? How high did the water get in here?”

Mr. Brady points towards the ceiling in the side room that we are standing and states, “Well the house is sort of warped out of level,” and walks into the dining room for a better display.

He extends his arm and touches the wall about 3 or 4 inches below the ceiling. “The water came up about here,” pointing towards the remains of an electrical box in the ceiling of the room. He continues, “It beat the dickens out of the chandelier that used to be here.”

“So, you and your wife decided to wait out the storm and not leave?”

“Yes. This place had never been flooded as long as anyone can remember, I thought we’d be safe.”

“What did you do when the water started rising?”

“When the extension I built on the rear of the house began to shift as water rose up to about the floor level, I started to worry that this might be bad.” He pointed to the empty patio behind the house. Karina floated the extension to the house away to some other part of the neighborhood.

“We went up into the attic.”

“What would you have done had the water risen even higher?”

“We might have found ourselves swimming in the neighborhood. I’d have broken out the louvers in the attic vent in the end of roof to get out.”

I stood here imaging this situation of Larry and Pauline crouching on that old dirty attic over ten feet of swirling salty floodwater.

“Larry, I’ll bet your wife was screaming, ‘I can’t believe you convinced me to stay. We should have gotten out of Pearlington when they told us to leave; we are both going to die. I can’t believe I agreed to let you buy this house.’ ”

“Yes, you are pretty much right, that’s about what she said. Thank goodness we can laugh about it now," he said with a hint on uncertainty in his voice.

Day 194 - The Fire in My Bosom Burns My Clothes

2008-10-10T03:00:00.000-05:00

The crowd is restive. The building is full. It is hot, the light is not very good and everyone is sweaty and uncomfortable. A series of speakers have previously mounted the stage and warmed up the crowd. Great men stood and proclaimed great hope for the future and woe to the crowd for its behavior. One notable man, Jeremiah, quoted THE LORD, “I am sick of your sacrifices, your burnt offerings; why are you not caring for the poor, freeing the captives and honoring the stranger in your land? Circumcise your heart to me lest my wrath go forth like fire!”

He had hardly finished speaking when a voice shouted from the other side of the hall, “Thou art my King and my God who ordained victories for Jacob, through you we push down our foes, for in our own strength we cannot trust and we continually give thanks to you; yet you have cast us off and abased us, made us a laughingstock among the peoples of the world. Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our oppression? Rise up and come to our help in the name of your steadfast love!”

Then another voice from the rear of the auditorium shouted back, “Can a man carry fire in his bosom and his clothes not get burned? Wise men lay up knowledge, but the babbling fool brings ruin near.”

After the final speaker harangues the crowd, many faces among them are red with anger and frustration. Shaking fists are raised. The ring of shouts of “Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” rain about this final speaker, the insane one named Ezekiel, as he steps down from the stage towards his seat in the front row.

Now, as the crowd’s shouting diminishes suddenly a deafening sound from nowhere and everywhere as if it were a whirlwind proclaims, “I thought I would pour out my wrath upon you and spend my anger against you in the wilderness. But, I withheld my hand and acted for the sake of my name, that I would not be profaned in the sight of the nations in whose sight I brought you out. Moreover, I gave you statutes that were not good and ordinances by which you could not live; and I defiled you through your own gifts by demanding you offer to the fire all your first born so I might horrify you, so you will know I AM THE LORD.”

The organizers panic. They try to keep control of the proceedings by hurrying the announcer of the fight onto the stage with microphone in hand. He begins, "Ladies and Gentlemen, in one corner we will have The Innocent standing in for the goodness and kindness of God and human virtue. In the other corner we will have his Adversary standing in defense of the Psalms (especially the 44th), and wisdom of Proverbs. The noise of the crowd increases. Out in the seats a heckler with “King Lear” written across the front of his baseball hat sputters at this spectacle and shouts in a strong bass voice, “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport."

In the wings off stage-right, The One called God smiles with a self-satisfied knowledge and casts his gamble with The Adversary who is standing on stage-left. The Innocent, who in actuality is a stranger from another land, has learned of this God and has come to love and honor Him more greatly than the people in this audience. The Innocent stands on the street at the entrance to the auditorium listening to the noise and hurrah within but is not quite able to make out what is said. He enters and stands at the top of the central aisle that leads down to the stage. One of the organizers recognizes the man and bids his fellows to drag him to the stage, now converted to a ring for the fight.

Satan considers his wager, ”Of what value is faith if practiced only for reward?” He leaves the building, smiling with a self-satisfied knowledge.

Thirty-seven (24) rounds later the Innocent is no more an innocent but a beaten, defeated man who still fights to deny his newly found knowledge that there can be no assurance of reward for the loyal servant; that this God can do ill to a good man. Yet he still clings to his faith in God, even with the knowledge that the crowd has splayed and killed his family and burnt his home and possessions at God’s instigation by a wager with…can it be Himself? Cowering and fearful, the Innocent clings to that Faith in Him even though his Adversary has broken his body.

Now carried by the organizers from the ring into the wings, he lies bloodied and diseased. He has only shouted to God that this cannot be without cause and demands of the Adversary to explain what ill the Innocent has done to merit this defeat.

Unaware a nearby microphone is still turned on, The Gambler still stands in the wings of stage-right, stunned that he has allowed this horribly cruel and capricious thing of his Own to unfold. A tear rolls down the cheek of The Gambler as the Innocent demands this explanation; but as fast as the tear forms, an impulse of unbounded fury rises in his chest. He shouts,” It is so because I wanted it so!”

This final fury cows the Innocent. He is too terrified and too devastated to speak boldly hearing that this ill-made reward for goodness only results from capriciousness. He is determined however to dare a very quietly and a very carefully crafted acknowledgement, “I now see You for who You are and can only fear for us all.”

The crowd staring at the empty stage is stunned and staggered by this argument coming from the PA system. People stand up uneasily. Finally those towards the rear begin to file out. As they leave, a woman turns to her husband and whispers, “This can’t be it. It can’t be all there is, can it? Is this it?” The husband struggles for words, finally muttering under his breath, “No, it can’t be. There must be hope for reward.” Another fellow in the departing crowd who hears the man’s reply to his wife says, “Hey, don’t be too zealous, or too rowdy, find the middle ground. Don’t rock the boat or you’ll get stepped on.”

There in the wings the Innocent struggles to his feet and the Gambler stands in silence. Both are too uncomfortable to look at each other, for their misery is great. Both are devastated by what has unfolded. They squirm in the pain of self-acknowledgement, the Gambler in recognition of who He is, the Innocent in submissive recognition of who God is. Finally The Gambler turns to leave. As He passes the Innocent Man, he speaks tenderly, “I stand by my Word. I will not restore your family but I remember Second Isaiah’s words, today you shall receive double compensation for My sin. Now, I must go away to think of what we have done here today.” He bows his head and his anger is kindled against the words of the crowd, but he repents.

He will be heard no more for 500 years, when at last he will decide finally enough is enough. He will come to say, “I do love these people as I love Myself. I do forgive and I do repent for you are a part of me.”

Amen

Henry Paris, copyright October 6, 2006