Seek the King

A word about the health care bill

2010-03-22T09:55:00.000-05:00

To my disgruntled Republican friends: I respect you guys a lot, but let's keep things in perspective. The world is not coming to an end now that Congress has passed a health-care bill. You are frustrated, but please remember that this legislation was passed by democratically-elected representatives. Democracy, despite its many faults, has proven so far to be the form of government most capable of restraining human sinfulness sufficiently to maintain a (mostly) just and civil society. If this health care reform were pressed upon you by a totalitarian state (which it most clearly is not), then you'd have a reason to moan and wail - but only in private, remembering that totalitarian states don't tolerate public dissent very well.

You know that God is sovereign over elections and legislation. You also know that authority is given to humankind to be stewards over creation. It is not a right given to us by the Constitution, it is a responsibility given to us by the Creator. We have the right and the responsibility to participate in our government - and we are free to refuse to participate (by not voting, not communicating with our representatives, refusing to give sufficient attention to understanding the issues, accepting the sound-bite superficial view given by the media, etc), though there is a cost. However, we are less free than the Lord, who is free to intervene in the political process as He sees fit. Remembering that He knows what is ultimately good for us, and we do not, this should be a comforting thought.
Consider: since the churches have not dealt effectively with relief for the poor, this may be a divine correction. God prefers to work through his people, but certainly there are cases when direct intervention may be necessary. If God's people refuse to care for the poor, as is our duty clearly indicated by the teachings of Jesus, then perhaps God gives over that responsibility to the government. How shameful for the Church!

Even if you think my last suggestion is ridiculous, please think carefully before you vilify the Democrats. These are people doing their best (although corrupted by the lure of power and money, and wouldn't you be, too? But for the grace of God, there go I...) to rule fairly and responsibly. So are the Republicans. It just happens that the Democrats are more inclined to think that people whose basic needs are met will make a more successful nation, while the Republicans, bless their silly heads, think that big corporations whose profit margins are bigger will look after the little people and make a more successful nation. Either way, if the people truly don't like it, the people can exercise their rights and fulfill their responsibilities, and elect somebody else who will change it.

Eyes Open

2010-02-22T08:57:00.001-06:00

I've been firmly closed into my own little world for a while. Yesterday, God took advantage of my free half-hour before church to open things up a bit. Funny how He wedged that right in between finishing an assignment so I could loan Ryn my book, and getting an urgent text from our worship leader to come run the slides! For a couple of months, I haven't thought much about the larger community; I've been too focused on my new studies, our little circle of friends, and frustrations at work.

All it took to remind me that I belong to a bigger world than that, was a drive down Beach Boulevard. If you've been here, you can picture it: some parts all polished up and ready for tourists, other parts still unpaved, bordered with scrubby bushes and empty lots. Weather-beaten oak trees outline the foundations of demolished homes, and adolescent shrubberies decorate the ostentatious, overgrown new structures. St. Clare's still has a huge sign out front that reads, "Katrina was big, but God is bigger." At 9:00 on Sunday, parishioners' cars are gathered around the Quonset hut where they're still meeting, but the steel structure of a new church building rises in the background.

That quick excursion was a good reminder of why I'm here, why the community of believers that I'm committed to is here. You'd think, feeding construction volunteers every day, it would be hard to forget, but the human brain has an amazing capacity to lose track of the big picture. So let's have a crystal-clear reminder of the grand idea: "Lagniappe Presbyterian Church exists on the Mississippi Gulf Coast to participate in the restoration of creation through the declaration and demonstration of the love of God shown to us in Christ Jesus." My part in this is pretty small right now, but that doesn't mean I can ignore it.

In other news, the heat is on: it's spring break season, which means we're looking at larger and younger groups of volunteers for the next 8 weeks or so. I'm in Week 5 of my first semester as a Library Science master's student. Two friends have new puppies. Our resident Green Thumb is already eating broccoli from her garden, which means I need to get on the ball if I want to raise any cold-season crops. We have another engagement and another baby on the way (not the same couple!). Pastor Curt drove a trailer of supplies to Miami last week, and the stuff is on its way to Haiti now. Mardi Gras is over, but the tourism season in the Bay is only beginning. This is the time for lovely weather in coastal MS, so I ought to get off the laptop and go enjoy it!

For cat-lovers only

2010-02-02T08:47:00.002-06:00

This post is strictly for those of you who love cats. Everyone else, please don't read what I'm about to write; it will just give you bad ideas.

Will someone please remind me why I own a cat? At present, mine is in danger of being booted out on the street, to fend with the likes of Buster (the big tom with torn ears) and Lily (that's the fluffy long-hair on the back lot) and a stray dog...I don't know the breed, but it's big and bony and hungry-looking. There's another dog next door, but I think even my cowardly cat can deal with Bitsy.

First off, I'm getting breakfast and she wants to eat my yogurt. Failing that, she wants me to hand-feed her stems of oat-grass. Successful marketing campaign, there, convincing me to buy seeds of kitty grass, but never bothering to tell me it's highly addictive. Not to mention, cat's teeth aren't exactly made for biting off vegetation, so either Luthien makes a total mess (seeds, dirt, and stems all over the floor) or I have to clip it for her and garnish her breakfast with it.

Next, she interferes with my schoolwork procrastination session, constantly asking to go in and out to the screen porch. It's plenty warm enough for her to sit out there and bird-watch, which is one of the attractions of this apartment. But it's a bit too chilly to just leave the door open. So when she wants to come in for a snack, or for some other mysterious feline purpose, she puts her feet up on the bottom pane and yowls. When she's ready to go out again (approximately 9.3 seconds later), she stands on my pile of unopened bills and shreds them with her teeth. I appreciate the sentiment, but it's embarrassing to enclose a shredded payment coupon with my check. Funny, too, how she handles paper so much more easily than grass.

Finally, I'm ready to go out on the porch myself, to lay out some freshly-washed sweaters to dry, and to water my vegetable seedlings. Luthien contemplates drinking out of the watering can. I can picture her ears getting stuck in the opening, which is almost-but-not-quite large enough for a feline head. Sadly, depriving me of a good laugh, she decides against the drink and runs back inside. With dirty, wet paws, straight from the seedling tray, across my white sweater.

My landlord has not yet repaired the screens. If tomorrow morning goes anything like today, I predict defenestration for my furry friend.

Yé! Utúvienyes!

2010-01-28T09:18:00.001-06:00

In other words, "Eureka!" Quick poll: Where and when do revelatory moments come to you? While driving? In that place between sleep and awake? In the shower? I had one yesterday while sweeping the back hallway. I'm sure I can't explain the actual contents, because it was sort of like in A Wrinkle In Time, when Meg grasps the idea of the tesseract, but fleetingly. It's gone in a moment, but the brief glimpse is enough to make you trust in the enduring reality. Let's just say, in this case Gollum (from The Lord of the Rings) helped me understand predestination - which, if you're keeping up with this blog, you know is a writhing root across my path, trying to snag me by the ankles.

Anyway, it's the experience of sudden revelation that interests me. In a Sunday School class a couple of years ago, we discussed how to tell the voice of God from the voice inside your head. If I remember correctly, this was one of the key markers: the thoughts that come from God are like sudden missiles, breaking into my thoughts. They couldn't possibly have come from me. Yet upon comparison with Scripture, they are in accord with what has been revealed to us of God's nature. And, typical of God, He doesn't send them at moments when we would expect. It's not (always or even often) when you're studying the Bible or being extra-holy that He speaks so directly. It's during some mundane activity like sweeping, or mowing the yard. Or whenever you're off-guard, like when you're half-asleep.

...Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it... My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end...

Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

What do they need?

2010-01-28T09:01:00.000-06:00

Lagniappe and the world
I'm so proud of our church! Let me brag on Lagniappe a little bit (while inwardly congratulating myself on finding such an awesome community of faith, while realizing sheepishly that I had little or nothing to do with it. It was arranged entirely by the ultimate Travel Agent...): One of our former construction supervisors is in Haiti this week. He's traveling with a group from the Presbyterian Church in America's MNA (Mission to North America) disaster relief arm. The group is there to assess the situation and return with a report on what churches here can do to help. Our friend carries with him a long list of questions to ask the locals. Among them, "How do people in Haiti fish?" You see, fishing is an activity near and dear to the hearts of Gulf Coast residents. What more appropriate action, for a coastal church dedicated to the proposition of helping people help themselves, than to send fishing gear instead of tinned sardines? We just need to know whether Haitians need shrimp nets, fly-fishing lures, or what!

In the meantime, we're collecting canned food - but special attention has been paid to what will be most useful and appropriate: ready-to-eat foods, ideally with pull-tops (since it's hard to find your can opener under a pile of rubble), ideally things Haitians like to eat. In case your church is also doing this, apparently potatoes and tomatoes are hit items - another church member quizzed a friend who spent a lot of time there. We're also taking monetary donations to pay for the shipping. It's a good way to get started, until we can find out what we can do long-term.

Sighting the King; Multiple Personality Edition

2010-01-20T20:24:00.000-06:00

I saw Jesus in several different personalities in the course of two days last week. Our facility was opened as a cold-weather shelter for about a week, as Mississippi endured unusually frigid weather. Temperatures dipped down into the teens and twenties for a long stretch; pipes all over the state burst, since this sort of weather is so rare that builders don’t bother to protect them from the cold. The Red Cross provided a warm bed and two hot meals per day for about 8 people during this time; they just added right in with the 50 or so volunteers working for LESM.

Cookie Monster
One of the shelter clients came in shortly before supper and made a beeline for the snack counter. He didn’t speak very clearly, but he knew what he wanted; he quickly abandoned a half-eaten apple in order to devote his full attention to a large package of chocolate sandwich cookies. By the time I had dinner ready, he had munched his way through most of the package, then wandered off towards the showers, still clutching the crinkly plastic tray. I thought about rescuing some of the cookies for the rest of the group, but decided against it. Somewhere under that street-worn exterior was a fun-loving kid who really likes his cookies. Surely Jesus enjoys hanging out with somebody who has the Cookie Monster’s innocent appreciation of a simple pleasure.

Going Home
The next day, Jesus was collaborating with a Red Cross staffer, an Episcopalian priest, and our volunteer coordinator. Together, they tracked down my cookie monster’s family. It turns out they’d been looking for him for the better part of a week. He lives at home with his family, but has a tendency to wander out. In this cold snap, of course they were quite worried. Reconnecting them was a great success.

Pipes
That same day, a gentleman came looking for help with the water pipes on his rented, elevated house. Apparently, his absentee landlord refused to do anything about the problem, and in fact blamed the tenant for not taking appropriate measures before the pipes froze. (Although I can attest to the fact that you can run the water and still have pipes burst; it happened at my apartment, too!) This gentleman doesn’t have the money to hire someone; he’s still paying off doctor’s bills from having suffered a heart attack last year. All the hardware stores were sold out of pipe joints, heat tape, and pipe insulation, but he had some strips of regular insulation and a passel of zip ties. At 70 years old, he just needed someone spry enough to get up on a ladder and insulate the pipes under the house. Since the problem wasn’t Katrina-related, I didn’t know if LESM would take the job, but I took down his phone number, thinking maybe someone from the church could get on it. Thinking, I could help wrap insulation, but I don’t have enough construction-savvy to know if his plan would even work!

My co-worker from the construction side overheard our conversation. He thought the insulation plan would work fine, checked with his boss, and snagged the phone number from me right after the gentleman left. “We’ll just take a couple volunteers out tomorrow. I’ll call him.” That’s Jesus, right there in my neighbor, moving toward a need.

Effects of Blogging

2010-01-20T20:22:00.000-06:00

I’ve realized something about this blog that should have been obvious some time ago. It began to come clear when I tried to write a Christmas update letter to some family members. Instead of a quick summary of my year, I suddenly had several pages of lengthy explanation, and I was only up to June. I think what I’ve done in posting a blog is to take all the things I might have previously written down for myself, heavily edited them for public consumption, and posted them online. With the result that any deeper soul-searching, anything that might sound too complain-ey, anything reflecting negative aspects of the organizations I’ve worked for, has not gotten written down at all. So when I tried to write a letter, all this stuff came pouring out that I hadn’t worked through yet. Interesting. Maybe I should have a blog posted only to myself? I think Grandma had an ap for that: it's called a journal.

The great Universe Disturber

2009-12-21T07:42:00.003-06:00

I have a couple of quotations for you today, variously related to the Word that comes to us at Christmas:

If we disturb the universe, no matter how lovingly, we're likely to get hurt. Nobody has ever promised that universe-disturbers would have an easy time of it. Universe-disturbers make waves, rock boats, upset establishments. Gandhi upset the great British Empire. Despite his non-violence, he was unable to stop the shedding of blood, and he ended with a bullet through his heart. Anwar Sadat tried to work for peace in one of the most unpeaceful centuries in history, knowing that he might die for what he was doing, and he did.

Does it encourage our present-day universe-disturbers to know that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob before them were universe-disturbers? Their vision of God, while undeniably masculine, was also the vision of a God who cared, who appeared to his human friends and talked with them. The patriarchs lived in a primitive, under-populated world, and yet their vision of God as Creator of all, of God who cared, of God who was part of the story, was very new. Jesus was a great universe-disturber, so upsetting to the establishment of his day that they put him on a cross, hoping to finish him off. Those of us who try to follow his Way have a choice, either to go with him as universe-disturbers (butterflies) or to play it safe. Playing it safe ultimately leads to personal diminishment and death. If we play it safe, we resist change. Well. We all resist change, beginning as small children with our unverying bedtime routine, continuing all through our lives. The static condition may seem like security. But if we cannot move with change, willingly or reluctantly, we are closer to death and further from life.

Madeleine L'Engle, A Stone for a Pillow: Journeys with Jacob.

I.
There is only one physician,
Of flesh, yet spiritual,
Born yet unbegotten,
God incarnate,
Genuine life in the midst of death,
Sprung from Mary as well as God,
First subject to suffering, then beyond it,
Jesus Christ, our Lord.

II.
Be on the alert for Him who is above time,
The Timeless, the Unseen,
The One who became visible for our sakes,
Who was beyond touch and passion,
Yet for our sakes became subject to suffering,
And endured everything for us.

Ignatius of Antioch, taken here from the MacMillan Book of Earliest Christian Hymns

God's story is true. We know that God's story is true because God gave us his Word - that Word who came to us, as one of us, and dies for us, and descended into hell for us, and rose again from the dead for us, and ascended into heaven for us. The Word became the living truth for us, the only truth that can make us free. Part of that freedom is mortification. Part of that freedom is the Cross, for without the Cross there can be no Resurrection.

When was the last time anybody asked you, "Do I have your word?" Or when was the last time anybody said to you, "I give you my word," and you knew that you could trust that word, absolutely? How many times in the last few decades have we watched and listened to a political figure on television and hears him say, "I give you my word..." and shortly thereafter that word has proven false. In the past year alone, how many people have perjured themselves publicly? Sworn on the Bible, given their word, and that word has been a lie? Words of honor are broken casually today, as though they don't matter.
Small wonder that when God tells us, "I give you my Word," few people take him seriously.
"I give you my Word," said God, and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

Madeleine L'Engle, The Rock that is Higher: Story as Truth

New digs

2009-12-04T17:00:00.000-06:00

So just a general life update today. Some Lagniappe friends arrived from out of town, for the particularization service this weekend (more on that later), and I realized how much there is to catch up on.

For one, my job has changed again. Same place, still no job title, but now I'm mostly in the kitchen, preparing and serving lunches and dinners for volunteers, plus a bit of general camp housekeeping. We've been riffed (Reduction in Force), and I have one former co-worker who already had an interview for a new job, but another who may be looking for a while. On the plus side, it's looking like a move back toward the faith-based part of 'faith-based organization,' plus I now work directly under a real chef, so instead of guessing and stressing, I can just ask. Exactly how many pans of spaghetti does it take to feed 75 hungry carpenters?

Second, I have a lovely new studio apartment on Main Street, Bay Saint Louis. Fabulous. Even the cat likes it better; she can tear up and down the stairs and sit on the screen porch to watch birds. It's funny to bask in the sunshine and put up your Christmas tree in the same week.

Next up: Lagniappe becomes an 'official' church. Up til now, we've been a ministry or church plant of the Presbytery (our regional affiliation). Tomorrow, we'll become a regular congregation with our own Elders. Not that it makes a lot of difference in real life, but it's a great excuse for Lagniappe friends, former staff and volunteers to come down for a visit. After the worship service Saturday night, we'll all head down to the Mockingbird Cafe for celebration and socializing.

Finally, I was thinking about how the presence of friends is what makes the holidays seem important to me, and then I read my friend Jane's blog. She hit the nail on the head regarding giving, so if you want some real holiday spirit, check it out: http://janeels.blogspot.com/
After all, God is the original giver:

Ephesians 2:1-9
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

Owls and Buddhists

2009-11-08T08:52:00.000-06:00

Owls
Yeah, I'm a little late for Halloween. I was reading a book about someone else’s life the other night, when Life interrupted, by way of a barred owl hooting in my backyard. I always think there’s something magical about the barred owl’s call; in this case it reminded me to write about the sensory event of the past week or so:

Autumn has come to the Bay. It took a while, and I know all of you in the North have probably already had snow, but summer holds on as fiercely here as winter does in New York. Yet finally, I am reminded why autumn is my favorite season. It’s a feast for the senses!
* Wood smoke
* Leaves changing…even just a few, like here
* Apple cider and pumpkins
* Sweaters and fleece
* Socks…hey, what can I say? Flipflops one day, boots and woolies the next.
* Crisp, dry air and sunny days with a breeze

Buddhists
Latest Sight-the-King success: Don't freak out, but I spotted Jesus in a Buddhist lady in Burma (Myanmar). This week I watched Beyond Rangoon, a film about an American lady trapped in Burma (Myanmar) during the supression of a democratic uprising in that country in the late '80s. Never heard of it? Neither had I. Apparently it was much like the events of Tianenmen Square in China, with the exception that the military junta in Myanmar was much more successful at keeping foreign journalists from getting the word (or photos or TV footage) out. The students and Buddhist monks of Myanmar were led by a courageous lady named Aung San Suu Kyi.

The most memorable scene of the film was when Suu Kyi, on her way to speak at a public demonstration, was blocked by a squad of soldiers barring the street. They raised their machine guns to her, but for some reason, as she serenely walked toward them - all alone - none could bring themselves to fire. She passed through their ranks like a doe through high grain, gently parting the gun barrels. I swear, if Christianity were about our actions (and I have to re-learn every day that it's not), there are a lot of Buddhists in the world who would be better Christians than me. All truth is God's truth, and He gave a sizeable chunk to the East.

Not to get political, but...whoops, here goes: why is it that the USA meddles in the affairs of so many tyrannical regimes, but never with the peaceful but oil-poor nations like Tibet and Myanmar? If we're really so concerned about spreading democracy, it seems like our meddling would be more evenly distributed. Since it's not, we ought to call a spade a spade and admit that we're just interested in nukes and petrol. And those of us radicals, who would prefer no blood be spilled to guarantee our oil supply, ought to get busy praying and advocating for our brothers and sisters in the neglected nations. Sorry. Stepping off the soapbox now.

Washing Windows

2009-10-23T11:44:00.000-05:00

Some people hear from God most often while driving. Some hear Him in the shower. I seem to hear Him particularly well when I'm washing windows.
So I'm out front this morning, scrubbing rain splatters off the front door, and a thought that started earlier in the morning was completed. I had started thinking about a particular person; let's call the person Arden. It occurred to me how much more pleasant this person is, now that Arden doesn't spend so much time ragging on other co-workers. Arden used to make jokes at other people's expense and complain about folks pretty often. It made me uncomfortable, although - as I'm sure you know from experience - it's much easier to join in with such talk than to confront it. Lately, Arden doesn't do this so much, and instead I'm beginning to appreciate this person's true wit and wisdom.
This appreciation is well enough, but my next thought was maybe I should mention it to Arden. But as I was washing those windows, the real application came home to me: this is a reflection on my own behavior. It's not my place to say, "Hey, Arden, you're much nicer to be around when you aren't putting people down;" we're not close enough friends for that to go over well. It's my business to repent of the times (all too often) when I complain about co-workers to others. I don't think I'm ready to go around saying nice things about some of these folks (although that might be a profitable exercise, if I could come up with something that's not a lie), but I can at least keep my mouth shut. If Jesus helps me! You'd think some of this would have rubbed off on me from my grandmother, who never says a bad word about anyone, and always finds something positive to say about everything. Apparently I need more Jesus and more Grandma in me!

Proverbs 10:19 When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.

James 3:2-12 We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Raisin Cakes

2009-10-14T07:08:00.001-05:00

For today's observation, I need you to go read Hosea 2 and 3. In case you're like me and aren't quite sure where they hide Hosea in your printed Bible, it's after Daniel - or you can go here: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hosea+2&version=NIV
Really. This will make much more sense if you read it. It's not that long.

Ok, ready? So Monday night we were reading in Hosea 9, where the Lord says that Israel used to be so blessed, it was like finding grapes in the desert, and early fruit on the fig tree. Now, after Israel has run after other gods, she is barren and withered. We were discussing whether these things might apply to our nation, or to the Church, or to each of us individually (a hint: when we want the answer to be either-or, it's often both-and. In this case, we figure it applies to God's people - whether ancient or modern). Somebody mentioned how we Christians get all upset that our protections under the law are being whittled away, and so forth. Remembering Hosea 2 & 3, I was thinking about raisin cakes.

What happened with Hosea and Gomer was that Gomer, the faithless wife, ran after her other lovers (read: idols - plug in your personal favorite) partly because she thought she was getting all the good things from them. Food and drink, wool and linen, celebrations and religious observations, jewelry and fruitful fields - all the things Gomer (we) think we are getting through our own efforts and our idols - blessings. Raisin cakes. God took them away from Gomer in order to show her that only He provides blessings that satisfy. Is it not possible that after many years in which we, the Church, have run after other gods (worldly success, political power, the American dream, etc), God is now stripping away many of the fringe benefits in order to teach us that only He can satisfy? As usual, at this thought I am both cringing and thankful. Hosea 2:14-15:

Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

In observance, let me offer a recipe from a peculiar book I picked up recently. It's called The Good Book Cookbook, containing re-created recipes for many of the foods mentioned in the Bible, and information about the ancient Middle Eastern diet. Enjoy, and remember where your blessings come from!

Raisin Cake
Sustain me with cakes of raisins...
Song of Solomon 2:5

4 eggs
1/2 c honey
1/2 c whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 c chopped raisins
1 c almonds
whipped cream

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a large bowl, beat eggs until fluffy. Gradually beat in honey, flour, salt, raisins, and nuts. Pour batter into oiled 9x9 inch pan. Bake 30-40 minues. Serve warm with whipped cream.

Scandalous Lewis

2009-10-11T18:01:00.000-05:00

I never knew C.S. Lewis was so scandalous! Listen to this:

The pagan traditions, being pre-Christian, contained the mystery and wonder and excitement that preceded the Incarnation. In our modern age, post-Christian humanity has lost this sense of wonder; the world has become a dark, bleak place. In a letter to Blessed Don Giovanni Calabria, written in Latin, Lewis shows us this view with the following observation:

What you say about the present state of mankind is true: indeed, it is even worse than you say.
For they neglect not only the law of Christ but even the Law of Nature as known by the Pagans. For now they do not blush at adultery, treachery, perjury, theft and the other crimes which I will not say Christian Doctors, but the Pagans and the Barbarians have themselves denounced.
They err who say ‘the world is turning pagan again.’ Would that it were! The truth is that we are falling into a much worse state.
'Post-Christian man’ is not the same as ‘pre-Christian man.’ He is as far removed as virgin is from widow: there is nothing in common except want of a spouse; but there is a great difference between a spouse-to-come and a spouse lost.

---C.S. Lewis, The Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis. Trans. Martin Moynihan. (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), 83-85.

Lewis significantly considered the possibility that the only way the world can be Christianized again is that we would first have to reconvert humanity back to the pagan traditions. “If they were Stoics, Orphics, Mithraists, or (better still) peasants worshipping the Earth, our task might be easier. This is why I do not regard contemporary Paganisms (Theosophy, Anthroposophy, etc.) as a wholly bad symptom.” C.S. Lewis, “Modern Man and his Categories of Thought” in Present Concerns . Ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers: 1986), 66.

All this above is from an interesting blog I discovered while trying to sort out my most recent read: Till We Have Faces, by Lewis. The full blog entry is at http://houseoftheinklings.blogspot.com/2006/12/till-we-have-faces.html

Scandalous
So back up for a second: did Lewis just propose that some modern paganism would be a healthy thing? Yep, sure did. That's no more confusing than the book. I pushed through all of Till We Have Faces on the flight home this weekend. I think I will have to read it again more carefully, but I'm too impatient to wait before writing, so too bad for you. You're stuck reading my half-formed ideas again.

Like all of Lewis' writing, this book is lucid and brilliantly written. Unlike what I've encountered before, Christianity is not plainly on the surface; in fact, it's a pagan tale, a re-telling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. What's impressive is his success at communicating several ideas:
* The foolishness of mortals trying to question or accuse immortals. Orual, the viewpoint character, gets no more answer from her god than Job gets from the Living God; only this, that God does exactly as he pleases.
* That we should be immensely grateful that our God is Love, that he inclines his favor toward us and is not impersonal or uncaring. He does not riddle with us, but reveals himself - not completely, for we are not capable as yet of understanding it all - but faithfully, without trick or misleading.
* How pagan philosophy (whether of the ancient Greeks or of the modern paganisms, as he calls them) is capable of identifying the best way to be human, but incapable of mending our brokenness so that we can be as good as we wish.

And with these three things, as a Christian I can respond with gratitude. How not? Lord, to whom shall we go?

Comfortable Lands

2009-10-11T17:46:00.001-05:00

I just got back from a trip North, and I must say I fully enjoyed it. I read, picked apples, made pie, visited my brother at college, made fun of early modern art (OK, and appreciated some, too), stayed in a lovely cabin at a state park in PA, saw my grandmother and two uncles, and finally moved the contents of my storage unit to MS. That makes it feel very permanent! But here's what I noticed while driving through western PA:
It's a very comfortable state. Pennsylvania is well-settled. We stopped at the Horseshoe Curve, near Altoona, and the exhibits about the challenges of getting a railroad line across the state from east to west made it obvious how difficult it must have been to explore the area. A wide swath of mountains makes for rugged travel. But at this point, PA has been settled for so long, it reminds me of a pair of well-broken-in blue jeans. It's creased and worn down in all the right places, stretched out where it needs to be. There are roads and fields everywhere. Even in the woods, you can tell how long Mankind has been around, because you're constantly encountering old logging traces or artifacts. Granted, the place has its share of scars from our careless exploitations, but darn it, I like that state!

Sighting the King
Up next: more reading results. In the meantime, here are my latest glimpses of Jesus in my neighbor:
* Pr. Jean, preaching. We're working through the book of Acts, and we're up to the arrival of the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire upon the disciples. The indwelling of the Spirit is evidence that a person is chosen of God. The preaching that we're blessed with through Jean is rather spectacular evidence. As he'd say, "Thank you, Sir!"
* A friend putting in several hours of labor in the Southern heat to help a single mom pack and move into a new house. Don't tell her I think it was Jesus helping tape the boxes, she'll just get embarrassed.
* An Episcopalian singing his fool head off, arms up in the air, face tilted to the elaborately painted ceiling, praising God visibly for the rest of us.
* An irritated Methodist attending the Episcopal church, not quite persuaded that all this kneeling and incense is profitable, but willing to put up with it for the sake of hearing the Word spoken clearly by the Lord's messenger.
* People who suffer. I keep encountering hurting people who bear witness to the fact that God works through suffering, in ways we can't understand. When they thank God for things like infant deaths and hurricanes, I cringe - but I also marvel at how he works beauty and complexity out of things we think are just bad or unfortunate.

Seeing the Value of Tradition

2009-10-05T10:33:00.001-05:00

When I'm in Auburn, I usually visit Saints Peter & John Episcopal Church. The rector, Rev. Doug, is a wonderful preacher and I'm always edified and moved by the service. Visually, it's quite a contrast from Lagniappe: the sanctuary at Sts. Peter & John is lovely and full of symbolism, richly-carved wood, and stained glass. Lagniappe is an old warehouse with spotty cement floors and Where Y'at signs hung from every available surface; it's chiefly decorated by the living saints residing in BSL and Waveland. Yet the sweet Spirit is noticeably the same in both places.

The main difference for me at Sts. Peter & John is the prominence of tradition. They follow the Book of Common Prayer and the lectionary readings, while Lagniappe tends more to topical series or a progression through one book of the Bible. The Episcopalian liturgy is part spoken, part sung. It takes a bit of getting used to, especially the rhythms of flipping from the BCP to the hymnal to the bulletin, and sitting-standing-kneeling. But in the ritual, I am aware (more clearly than at other times) that I am part of the Body of Christ, linked through him to all the other believers throughout time and space. The other virtue of this tradition is that reading from the lectionary (a cycle of assigned readings from the Old Testament, Psalms, Gospels and Epistles) shows the connections between portions of Scripture. When enriched by the hymns and sermon, this way of planning for worship gives a fuller view than does examining just one portion at a time. For example, the service this Sunday contained the following:

Genesis 2:18-24

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said,
   "This is now bone of my bones
   and flesh of my flesh;
   she shall be called 'woman,'
   for she was taken out of man."
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

Psalm 8

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.
From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Hebrews 1: 1-4 and 2: 5-12

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.
It is not to angels that he has subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But there is a place where someone has testified:
"What is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the angels;
you crowned him with glory and honor
and put everything under his feet."
In putting everything under him, God left nothing that is not subject to him. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. He says,
"I will declare your name to my brothers;
in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises."

Love divine, all loves excelling
Charles Wesley

Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven, to earth come down;
fix in us thy humble dwelling;
all thy faithful mercies crown!

Jesus thou art all compassion,
pure, unbounded love thou art;
visit us with thy salvation;
enter every trembling heart.

Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit
into every troubled breast!
Let us all in thee inherit;
let us find that second rest.

Take away our bent to sinning;
Alpha and Omega be;
end of faith, as its beginning,
set our hearts at liberty.

Come, Almighty to deliver,
let us all thy life receive;
suddenly return and never,
nevermore thy temples leave.

Thee we would be always blessing,
serve thee as thy hosts above,
pray and praise thee without ceasing,
glory in thy perfect love.

Finish, then, thy new creation;
pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see thy great salvation
perfectly restored in thee;

Changed from glory into glory,
till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise.

Mark 10:2-12

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"
"What did Moses command you?" he replied.
They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away."
"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

Fr. Doug showed us this traditional icon of Jesus; it's called The Bridegroom. (I have copied it from http://www.archangelsbooks.com/prodimages/Large/Icons/11S12.jpg)

Jesus is shown after having been mocked by the Roman soldiers. He holds the reed mock-scepter, and wears the thorn mock-crown and the royal robe. It's a challenging image; when we think of Christ as the Bridegroom, it's much more pleasant and comfy to picture him in radiant white, presiding over the heavenly banquet. But as the letter to the Hebrews points out, in this world we do not yet see everything in subjection to Christ. On behalf of the rest of creation, we offer praise to God. We look forward to the day when we, Man and Woman, will be the perfect rulers over creation (humble and yet honored because God ordained it so - see C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew) and when Christ shall present his Bride, the Church, radiant and spotless. Until then, recognizing that He did not count the bride-price too high when he was mocked, flogged, crucified and abandoned, we may honor the picture we see in marriage. Here's to all my married friends who are submitting to one another in Christ-like love! (see Ephesians 6)

Cool Weather

2009-10-01T10:04:00.000-05:00

OK, so the "official" start of autumn on September 21 is not so far off. By September 28, we got a cold front here in coastal Mississippi...meaning the average daily high has dropped from 90-ish to 75-ish, and the humidity has dropped right off into the Gulf. It's actually pleasant to be outdoors now! Pr. Jean showed up in jeans and a sweater yesterday, and Pr. Curt was whistling "Joy to the World." You can tell what part of the country they're from!

A couple of us went hiking yesterday afternoon, and it was lovely, except for the large, threatening spiders who apparently prefer to construct their webs slightly above face height and across the hiking trail. Can't wait to get up North and spend a week enjoying serious autumn, complete with changing leaves.

Tuxachanie Trail, just north of Gulfport, MS, DeSoto National Forest:

Lord, To Whom Shall We Go?

2009-09-28T09:12:00.003-05:00

It always takes me by surprise. In the middle of the prayer during worship Sunday, Jean said something like, "Lord, we know that you are real." And right then and there, sparked by the most innocuous phrase, doubt reared its daunting head. What if...? I don't know about you, but I've always fled from doubt like a house afire. I just haven't any idea how to deal with it.

Then an answer came to me like sudden grace: "Lord, to whom shall we go?" I looked it up: it's from the end of John 6. Jesus had begun teaching that it would be necessary to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Naturally, the Jews were horrified. Breaking the commandment about not eating blood was bad enough, but he was talking about his own blood. Sounded like cannibalism! John says, "from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him." Obviously, doubt had struck them hard, and for good reason - Jesus appeared to be losing his mind! I'm guessing the disciples who stayed were those who had somehow become used to Jesus talking like a madman, and convinced themselves that, whatever he meant, it wasn't literal.

Anyway, here's what happens next, as Jesus sees people fading away (John 6:67-69):

"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

Lord, to whom shall we go? If Christianity is not true, I can't conceive of any acceptable substitute. I think Jean said it once: if our faith were to be proved false, the most likely next step would be suicide. How could you live without Christ? Especially having had such a lofty hope? So when doubt springs up, maybe some people are stout enough to examine it, to come to grips with it, but I think I'm better off saying with Peter, "Lord, to whom shall we go?" If not Christ, nothing. Therefore Christ. If I'm wrong, I'd rather not find out until I'm dead. In the meantime, I agree with Madeleine L'Engle: Yes, I believe. Even when I don't, I do. I'll put the doubt away in its dark closet.

Even when I don't, I do.

2009-09-16T10:41:00.000-05:00

About a month ago, one of the ladies at Lagniappe mentioned a prayer request. Megan said she was feeling far from God, and wanted to feel His closeness again as she had in the past. Two weeks ago, she reported back with a prayer of thanksgiving, but not because she particularly felt close again. Instead, her cousin called her up. The cousin's husband has cancer, which recently returned after a period of remission. The cousin wanted to talk with Megan about God, hoping that somehow her contact with a woman of faith would help. Megan says she realized then that she was exactly where she needed to be, and praise God that he doesn't answer our prayers in the ways that we think He should!

This week, as I was reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Stone for a Pillow: Journeys with Jacob, I came across a similar story. A younger woman called and asked Madeleine, "...'All the things you've written, do you believe them?'" The caller was facing chemo. Madeleine answered, "'I do.' God help me, I do. Even when I don't, I do." Lord, I believe. Help Thou my unbelief. So often, we can get it straight in our heads, but our hearts still hurt and protest. Isn't it a miracle, then, that God gives us the knowledge of Himself that allows us to get it just straight enough to comfort one another? And doesn't it just testify to the fact that this life is not about us? I'm not here to be happy and contented (although happiness and contentment are lovely byproducts of faith). God is not arranging my life to be all sweetness and prosperity. He's arranging it for His glory and for the edification of all His children.

Which brings me to another wonder: Monday, Pr. Jean was telling us about his battle with Leaf Blower Righteousness (if you're not sure what that means, check out my entry on Trash Can Righteousness from August 14 - a very similar problem!). He was fighting himself, Smeagol-versus-Gollum style, over whether or not he desired that somebody should notice when he kindly blew the grass clippings off the walk at the Baptist church. The funny thing is, when we wrestle with our sin, God can use such occasions for more than one good purpose: He can give the wrestler a lesson on the Gospel, while simultaneously giving a blessing to the recipient of our deeds. I won't say 'good deeds,' since oftentimes our motivation is shamefully self-aggrandizing. But I am ever more convinced that God can use our deeds (properly motivated or not) for good purposes. Therefore I'm sticking with C. S. Lewis on the point that even if I don't feel like loving my neighbor, it's best to go ahead and act in a loving manner, rather than become an emotional hermit; God can use my deeds to demonstrate His love, and also to change my heart until I become more loving. It's a two-fer deal!

Cozy and the Celestials

2009-09-02T13:10:00.003-05:00

This is the fabulous name of the band playing at Clyde's this weekend. (If you've been to the Bay, you remember the sign over this bar: it has a picture of a monkey and the tagline: Tasty Adult Beverages. So Cozy and the Celestials ought to fit right in.) I think it's perfectly serendipitous that I saw this today, since it juxtaposes the two opposing ideas I've been thinking about.

My thoughts were launched by my reading, as usual. I just re-read The Lord of the Rings, and then picked up Madeleine L-Engle's A Stone For a Pillow: Journeys with Jacob. I'm a long-time L'Engle fan, partly for her essays and other adult non-fiction, but also for her juvenile fiction: A Wrinkle in Time, among others. Two of the things I love about L'Engle's writing are the frequent atmosphere of windy autumn evenings, and her power to evoke memories of home and family. Her stories are full of simple traditions like flaming plum pudding, sitting together to read Christmas cards, and midnight snacks of sandwiches and hot chocolate.

Longing for Security
More pertinent to my current thoughts, many of L'Engle's stories begin and end in the family setting. Her characters exist within the love and security of their families, until the world interrupts with fear, destruction, and hatred. The Murry kids leave home with a mysterious trio of guides, to fight the faceless enemy that has captured their father. L'Engle herself leaves her family after Christmas to serve on a jury, pondering justice and violence in the New York City courts. The twins watch a small community react to the news of impending destruction. By the end of the story, the characters - having accomplished their task or learned what they needed to learn - return home, maybe wiser and stronger than before, but still in need of love and security.

In my own life, I’m hesitant and bold by turns. I’m applying for the Master’s in Library & Information Science program at the University of Southern Mississippi. If I am accepted, it will take over 2 years. That seems like a long time to commit to being here, considering I work for a hurricane-relief agency. LESM occasionally shows signs of instability, but even apart from that, I have to wonder how long my job will last. I’m trying to find a new place to live: one that’s not too expensive, but bigger than the converted tool-shed I rent right now! My desire is for security, but I suspect that in order to produce growth, God’s not going to let me hide in that cozy little cocoon.

Longing to Go Back
As I finished The Lord of the Rings the other night, the last few chapters brought me to tears. For one thing, Tolkien succeeds in bringing you to a place where you are certain all is lost; then, by a Providential turn of events, much (though not all) is redeemed. And certainly the Christian life is comparable: we are more broken than we know, more separated from God and one another than we wish to think, yet by Christ’s work we are more loved than we dare to dream; we are rescued and re-united.

But that’s not all; in the final chapters, Tolkien lets leak his longing for Heaven.

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

Frodo recites this poem after his return home, after he has realized that the Shire isn’t his true home any longer. He’s changed, and nothing in the mortal world can satisfy his soul any longer; he yearns for the place or time when all shall be healed and whole. He has had a vision of it before, and we see it again when he finally approaches the blessed shores:

And it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

(By the way, if you haven't read C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, you should. If nothing else, it will help you understand why I have such a firm vision of Heaven as a far green country - it seems both Lewis and Tolkien agreed on that point.) In the movie version, this line is given to Gandalf, comforting the hobbit Pippin as they face the likelihood of death. “Well, that isn’t so bad,” Pippin admits. Nope, it isn’t. In fact, our heart-longing is to go there: the far green country where we are fully known and fully loved, secure and free from sorrow and fear. In some ways, I think our souls remember the Garden before the Fall, when all this was true. We were at one with God and Man; and in Christ, we will be again. When we reach Heaven, we will know fully what we now know only in part and imperfectly.

So we want love and security, but frequently we have the choice between the imperfect but immediate coziness of home, and the remote perfection of Heaven. Thank God, he sometimes gives us glimpses of Heaven while we are still sojourners on the way.

Of course He’s not safe! But He’s good.
Like C. S. Lewis, L’Engle recognizes that God is inherently dangerous. She says, “The house of God is not a safe place. It is a cross where time and eternity meet, and where we are – or should be – challenged to live more vulnerably, more interdependently.” In the Church, our cozy self-righteousness is challenged. Our sin-separation from God is displayed in our separation from Man. And yet, in a healthy church (by definition full of sick sinners), atonement, at-one-ment is also displayed. This is the light that gives hope to the world: we are known by our love.

L’Engle also points out that experiences of the celestial are outside all boundaries, and outside our capacity to endure. The house of God is not made of stone or stained-glass windows (although these can sometimes be aids to point us towards things above). He can work on a mountainside, in a storm-tossed boat, at a bedside. But regardless where we touch Heaven, we can’t abide for long. As L’Engle puts it, Jacob has “an awe which is so profound a response to the Creator that it cannot be sustained for long periods of time.” After a quick glimpse, lasting maybe minutes or hours, we have to come down again. But someday we'll be changed, and will be able to endure God's presence forever. The celestial and the cozy will be united; the transcendent will be accessible.

A Side Note
You may accuse me of being one of those escapist science-fiction and fantasy fanatics. Guilty as charged! I do appreciate speculative fiction: what if the world was mostly as we know it, with this key difference, or this one? These authors explore humanity in a context just different enough to give us new eyes for the familiar. More importantly, they deal with what happens when the Universe thrusts itself in upon our comfortable lives. Call it Fate, forgotten heritage, aliens, Providence, or what you will – I know you’ve had those moments when something shakes you out of your ordinary life. And in essence, if not in degree, I think the effect is similar, whether an alien race takes over your planet or an alien idea takes over your consciousness. It takes you out of the swaddling-clothes, the ordinary routine that covers up your soul, and reveals not only your real self but God as well.

Ezekiel saw the wheel, Jacob saw the stairway to Heaven. The disciples on the road saw Jesus, but only when he broke the bread. Frodo dreamed of a far green country, and he accepted a terrifying duty in order to save his beloved, cozy homeland. I’ve seen a woodland dotted with empty habitations, and at last my Savior waiting with open arms in a sunny glade. You’ve seen it too, whether in the body or in the spirit: Jesus peeping out of the eyes of your neighbor, or knocking at the door of your heart. The Gospel is the fantasy that’s true. God says to us, “What if the world was this way, different than the way you think of it?” and then He shows us that it really is that way. No wonder so many of the great Christian writers have produced works of fantasy!

Trash Can Righteousness

2009-08-14T08:15:00.003-05:00

God continues to identify areas of sin in my life, making me cling even more to the Gospel. This morning, it was like He set up traffic cones, flashing lights, an air horn, and a crowd of hecklers. I'd have to be asleep - no, dead - not to notice what was going on. Part of me wants to ask, "Why can't You make it this obvious when it comes to decision-making? Where's the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night?" But that would just serve to change the subject, which is the ugliness of my trash-can righteousness.

Curt (assistant pastor at Lagniappe) was actually talking about his own version of this problem: Dead Dog Righteousness. A while back, he had to take a dog to the vet to be put down. The dog belonged to an older, legally-blind lady in the congregation. When he got back to the church, some volunteers were asking about his day, and as he described it he realized what he was doing. His heart was saying, "Look what a loving pastor I am, I even help people with the horrible things like putting an old dog to sleep." Then he said something about taking out the trash, and the warning signs went up and the air horn went off.

I do this all the time! When I glance at you as I pass you on my way out the door with a trash bag, my heart is saying, "Look what a diligent and humble worker I am, taking out the trash." What's worse, imagine a trash can that's particularly nasty and overflowing. I've been avoiding it for hours, hoping someone else will get it. But if I come across you taking it out, my wicked heart has a panic attack, thinking that you will think less of me because I didn't take out the trash. What comes out of my mouth is probably perfectly pleasant, "Thanks for taking out the trash!" But what's inside is ugly: I resent you for being a more diligent and humble worker than me, and I disdain myself for not taking the stupid trash out the first time I noticed it.

On the other hand, if I get back from my day off and that same nasty trash can is sitting there, overflowing, my idiotic works-righteousness attitude forces me to disdain you for not seeing that it needed to be emptied, and taking care of it. And then I'm right back to Trash Can Righteousness, feeling all virtuous just because I'm doing my job, taking the trash out. I'm pretty sure Jesus has something to say about this, although I can't find it at the moment. Something like, 'Don't expect to be congratulated for just doing your job.' He definitely has something to say about doing things just to be seen by men. (Check Matthew 6.)

So once again, I need to preach the Gospel to myself. What's your trash can? What is it that you pin up to be seen by men, hoping to establish your righteousness? May God remind us often that it's not about our works, which after all are just filthy rags in comparison with the righteousness of Christ that we're freely given.

Two trains traveling in opposite directions

2009-08-13T13:24:00.003-05:00

Bits and pieces from the Bay:

The Dating Game
It's August, not even close to springtime, but love is in the air! Maybe it's the three newlywed couples spreading pheromones around, but we now have 2 new couples dating in our little community. Don't you love it when you look at a person and think, "Gosh, somebody needs to snap him (or her) up!" and then, not too long after, somebody that you like equally well goes ahead and does it?

I'm wilting...wilting!
I have not been a very good gardener lately. First I neglected the herbs: I went out one day and discovered that the dill had sprouted up tall, fallen over, and gone to seed. Ok, fine. I harvested the seeds. I'm sure I have a recipe or two that call for dillseed. If not, I'll just plant them later. Then it was the basil; gone to flower, and all those glossy leaves turned a little bit sallow. Oops. Should have picked it.

Next it was the honeydew vine. I got two perfectly respectable melons, a bit small and lopsided, but tasty. But I let it go for a couple of weeks, and suddenly the vine has aspirations to take over the world! It's formed an alliance with a mystery plant that I don't remember inviting to the party, and together they've taken over the entire garden plot. Sooner or later, if I want beans and carrots and squash, I've got to do something about it. Remember that book, "The Plant that Ate Dirty Socks?" And the play, "Little Shop of Horrors"? Pray for me; I may need the Head Gardener to help me with this one.

And the wildflower seeds I scattered all over? I've got such a tangle, I'm not sure what to water anymore. The result is, when I get home from work and it's still 92 degrees with 90% humidity, I just say, "Aw, maybe it will rain," and don't water anything, so it's all wilty. I think being a good gardener must involve much more persistence than I've got.

Work Life
Some days I wonder how I landed here. Particularly on days when I have to get up at what a co-worker once called "zero dark-thirty" to cook breakfast for 50 people. Here's how it happened: the chef got himself fired. A couple days later, we got the news that, due to a gap in grant funding, our camp needed to eliminate one staff position. Voila: I became a twofer. I continue to look after the housekeeping and organization at camp (as well as assorted administrative tasks), but now I'm also the breakfast chef. I like cooking, but somehow kettles of grits, scrambled eggs and sausage are not what pushes the foodie button in my brain.

Two trains traveling in opposite directions
Believe it or not, there is a connection here. Becoming the breakfast chef was like a kick in the pants; I realized it was time to start thinking again about Life After Hurricane Relief. I'm happy to keep doing housekeeping and cooking for a while, because it's neccesary work and lets me stay involved with Lagniappe and the folks I'm growing to love here in the Bay. But eventually, I'm going to need to move on, and I don't think food service is the right direction. I've been thinking about Life After Hurricane Relief for a while now, intermittently, and I think I've ruled out pastoral ministry. What bubbled up in its place was library work.

I love information, systems, and helping people track down what they're looking for. I don't love managing a large number of young staff members, although I do love teaching - especially informal teaching, sharing knowledge in a practical setting. Plus, I have a study buddy. One of the other young ladies here wants to do the same thing.

So we're applying to Southern Miss for Library Science. You can do a Master's degree in a year (full-time) or two and a half (part-time, mostly online). The catch is that, to start in the spring of 2010, we have to have our application materials in by September 15. And that means...dum, dum, dum!...taking the GRE. That's the grad school version of the SAT. It has three sections: analytical writing (two essays), verbal reasoning (multiple choice), and mathematical reasoning (UH-OH).

We got a test prep book from (you guessed it) the local library. Essentially, the math section is high school math with a devious, tricky test-writer. Half the questions have more to do with figuring out what they're asking, and how to apply general rules to get the answer without going through all the calculations, than with the math itself. But I haven't done math at all since high school, 12 years ago. We come across topics and I say something dreadfully obvious like, "I remember that we had to learn this..." And I promptly put it out of my mind when I turned in the textbook at the end of my junior year.

I always hear people reminiscing (in a sour and annoyed sort of way) about those word problems with the trains, but I honestly don't remember doing them in school. But last night we had one in our practice test. It was a doozy, but not as hard as the question about investments. (If Mark invested $3000, some of it at 10% and some of it at 8%, and his interest earning last year was $256, how much did he invest at each interest rate?) I know for some people this is easy and fun, but give me a nice selection of analogies any day:
1. COLOR : SPECTRUM : :
(A) tone : scale
(B) sound : waves
(C) verse : poem
(D) dimension : space
(E) cell : organism

So What is the Church Doing Now?

2009-08-01T13:44:00.002-05:00

There was a lot of excitement and apprehension when our church first heard the announcement that we would be stopping the hurricane-response outreach and beginning community development instead. But in the past 2 months, nothing stupendous has started happening. We haven't given out vast quantities of anything, educated huge numbers of people, or built anything visible. So some folks are asking, "So what is the church doing now?"

Pr. Jean's answer is great: "What did your mirror tell you this morning?" At first this sounds like a frustrating, smart-mouth non-answer, but in fact he's very serious. As we started thinking about new outreach ministries, one big realization hit us: we need to do some congregational development before we can do effective community development. Here's the problem: although Lagniappe is extraordinarily vibrant in many ways, in one key way it's similar to many other American churches that are essentially lifeless: everyone in the congregation says they're willing to help, but everyone's waiting for a ready-made opportunity to be dropped in their lap. (Oh, and it can't be too demanding, and it has to be at a convenient time...) In the usual way of things, the pastor and a couple of pushy church ladies are the primary opportunity-droppers.

But what we want here is for everyone in the congregation to be truly involved. It's one thing to show up for a youth group function and be a chaperone, following the plan already laid out by the 'professional'. It's entirely different to invite a batch of kids to your home once a week for dinner and discussion. It's easy to say, "Someone should..." or "Wouldn't it be great if we had..." [and you can fill in the blank with nearly anything, from making coffee on Sunday morning to leading a study on Islam.] It's much harder, but more valuable, to say, "Well, I guess I should learn how that works, and do it!"

So here's what Lagniappe is doing lately:

Incubation
A lot of our great ideas are incubating, marinating, percolating.

Our summer intern is writing up a curriculum to condense all the ideas and information on community development that we (a core group of former and current church staff) studied this spring. When it's ready, we can pass this stuff on to another core group of church members.
Networking: We're thinking consciously about existing and new relationships with resource people, other organizations and congregations.
We may not have a visible, traditionally-structured Youth Group as yet, but we have a Youth Guy. He's spending his summer on a couple of major tasks:

Studying, spiritual formation, and getting tuned to the Lagniappe mission
Working with our 4 Americorps construction staff to convert a volunteer bunkhouse into a youth room
Hanging out with kids. He started with the pastor's three kids and their friends, and the group is already growing. They've had cookouts on the beach, gone golfing, seen the new Harry Potter movie. They're thinking together about inviting others to join them. Once school starts, he'll probably start a more organized Bible study/worship time.

Congregational Development

Monday nights, all of the 20 to 30-somethings meet at the girls' house for Bible study. We're in Hosea, of all books! But some nights, I think the point is not so much the particular book we're looking at, as the coaching that Jean weaves in. He's teaching us to think exegetically, without the fancy terminology. Secretly, I think he's grooming us to go out and be little Jean-clones (or more properly, Jesus-clones!!), so that in a few months or a year we can go and start other Bible study groups. Every week, we talk about a few verses, then we play a game that all of us hate...although we keep coming! In fact, the house is barely big enough to hold us all anymore. The game goes like this: We have to describe the general principles being taught by the text. Then Jean picks out a couple of people, and we have to make application for one another! This game is intensely uncomfortable, but it's good. It makes us think.
Sundays, we've added a "Philosophy of Ministry Minute" to the service. Jean or Curt or Sarah gets up and gives a little pitch about how our mission statement plays out. One of the most important ones turned into a whole sermon: What is the function of the pastor? If you read your New Testament, it is equipping the saints for works of service. As we heard in that sermon, it would be ridiculous for a plumber to go to the doctor with a knee problem, and for the doctor to say, "Gosh, that's awful. Why don't you stay here and be cared for, and I'll go out and do the plumbing until you get better." But that's essentially what we do in most churches. "Gosh, it's awful that you're a sinner. Stay here and be comforted and assured of your salvation. The professionals will go out and fulfil the Great Commission."
We've also made it a point to make all the Sunday responsibilities public. If the coffee needs to be made, the potluck lunch cleaned up after, the lectern and sound equipment set up, there's now a card posted on the bulletin board: Opportunity available. Once someone claims it for a month or a year, it goes in the other column: Opportunity claimed. We're hoping to expand this beyond Sundays to include things like calling the new visitors, visiting the sick, helping the widowed ladies with gutters.
As the school year starts, and the congregation gets used to the idea that the pastors are there to equip the rest, we hope to get some more visible, outward-focused ministries going. The progress is slower than we first envisioned, but it's more organic and solid.

Repentance

2009-07-17T09:24:00.005-05:00

Can it be that I've lived in the Christian milieu for 32 years and am just now learning what it means to repent? Shouldn't I have learned this in Sunday School? Was I absent that day?

This week I'm trying to learn how to deal with a particularly difficult co-worker. We'll call this person Casey. My problem is, I'm tempted to assign all the blame to Casey for being condescending, territorial, and inflexible, but the Holy Spirit is convicting me as guilty of being inflexible, uncharitable, demanding, insensitive, bullish and aggressive. (I know, Mom, you don't think of me as an aggressive person. You spent years trying to encourage me to just be assertive, but guess what? While I've been gone, I have developed workplace aggressiveness. I'm not sure whether that's an asset or a disease.)

I want a do-over
After our last encounter, I walked though the building having a one-sided conversation with Casey in my head. You know how it goes: you come up with all the clever and logical things you would have liked to say, and you rewrite the conversation so you come out better. As I was thinking, "Casey, why do you have to be so hostile?" I was struck by one of those flaming arrows of conscience: Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Now, by no stretch of imagination could my experience be called persecution, and I would even hesitate to assign the label "enemy," but I got the point all the same. Instead of rehearsing snotty remarks I could make to Casey, it would be better to expend my mental energies praying for this co-worker and for our working relationship to be professional , civil and productive.

The repentance part comes in as I begin to form a prayer for Casey, because it's all about me, isn't it? I'm so self-centered, I just want Casey to be less offensive so that I can go about my work without annoyance or any challenge to my self-righteous posture. Instead of praying God to reveal Himself to Casey so that Casey's self-esteem can be based in identity in Christ instead of in job performance, I'm ready to just pray that God will make Casey stop talking so condescendingly. I need to repent of my religion, the impulse that leads me to clothe my sin in Bible-talk. While I'm at it, I can repent of placing my self-esteem in job performance rather than in my identity as a child of God.

You log-eye!
I always thought my friend Jessica devised the best Bible-based insult I've ever heard: "You log-eye!" Based on Jesus' saying about taking the log out of your own eye before trying to take a speck out of your brother's eye. It wasn't until today that I had a great and sorry example of myself acting like a log-eye.

Sheesh. So as I'm writing, I go to look up the passage about log-eyes, and I realize that the three Scripture verses I'm thinking of are all together: the log-eye verse, the bit about not judging others, and the bit about loving your enemies. Maybe I should just go home and do some Bible study, repent for a while, and try this day over again later. Or maybe this workday is a living Bible study arranged by the Great Teacher! Check out my homework:

Luke 6: 27"But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
32 "If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
37 "Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you."
39He also told them a parable: "Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. 41 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.

At least this time, I kept my snotty remarks to myself and made a special effort to be civil and helpful, so I can do my repenting in private, kind of like a personal hygiene activity. I don't have to go confess and repent to Casey. Or do I?

Blueberries, Catahoulas, and Cramming

2009-06-23T08:33:00.009-05:00

Blueberries

Remember the blueberry boy from the farmer's market? I picked berries at his house this weekend! I went out with some of the other gals from church, to this ramshackle farm in the woods out by Kiln, MS, and there he was! His family also raises grass-fed beef, turkeys, chickens, corn, and a vegetable garden.

It was blazing hot, but we had a great time wandering down the rows of a 5-acre blueberry plot. We compared picking strategies: go to the bushes with the biggest clusters of fruit so you can strip them off a handful at a time, or find the ones with the ripest, biggest berries and wade right into the middle of the bush.

I came home with about a gallon of berries. Next task is to learn how to make blueberry preserves. My kitchen is too little, so I will probably have to take over the Lagniappe church kitchen.

Catahoulas

Remember Moose? We never knew what kind of dog Jeremy found in Pearlington, just that she was a real sweetie. Then a couple of weeks ago, I met Jim's dog, Bleu. I swear he looked like Moose's older brother. I asked Jim, with some excitement, "What kind of dog is he?" Turns out he's a Catahoula, which is a leopard cur dog, bred in Louisiana for boar-hunting. They're apparently bred more for temperament than appearance, which accounts for the wild variations in coloring. Moose and Bleu are sort of brown and liver-colored. Oreo, the camp dog here at Mission on the Bay, is often mistaken for a Dalmatian mix, but in personality she's a twin for Moose at the same age.

They're energetic and affectionate dogs, protective and devoted to their masters, assertive with other dogs, and extremely playful. They're natural retrievers and very intelligent. Here's the thing: I don't like dogs, as a general rule. You know, I'm a cat person. No drooling, no jumping on you with muddy paws, not requiring constant attention. But I like these Catahoulas. For one thing, they aren't drooly dogs. Their coarse hair doesn't seem to get as filthy as some dogs (except when they make a special effort, as when Moose found a long-dead cat and rolled in it. The ideal doggy perfume!) But I think the clincher is the nice personality. Who knew?

Cramming

We're going to have to find a bigger place to meet. Our Monday night Bible study is growing; last night we had 17 people in the living room at the girls' house. People squeezed into the couches, people laying with their upper bodies in the room and their legs stretched out the doorways into the kitchen and bedroom, people crammed on the hearth. And it's not like we're studying something juicy. That was over the winter when we talked about The Bases - i.e. how much can you get away with in dating and still call yourself a Christian - now that pulled in the crowds :) But no, this time we're studying Hosea, which most of us still have trouble finding.

This week we spent over an hour discussing just half of Chapter 2: why does God/Hosea keep describing how he's going to punish Israel/Gomer, and then bring her back? Why does he keep saying, "You are not my people," and then saying "You ARE my people"? Did Hosea have to pay off some guy in a cheap suit before he could marry Gomer? Is there some application to this story of an unfaithful wife and some kids with very strange names?

I was thinking about the picture of the covenant. Earlier on, God made a very business-like covenant with Israel, in much the same way that you would seal a contract. But in Hosea, he moves Israel to a whole new kind of covenant: marriage. Israel is the bride of the Lord. From being an unapproachable, terrifying God who dwells in mystery, in a pillar of fire or an untouchable Ark, God proposes the most intimate relationship. And in case we start thinking that we're unworthy of this relationship (we are) or that we have to clean up our act beforehand (we can't), God gives us this crazy picture of a man picking out a prostitute for his bride.

Seven years later, after their three children are born, when he finds her back with her old lovers, he doesn't freak out. He doesn't cast her out and divorce her. Nope, he knew what she was when he married her. Sure, it's disappointing, heart-breaking. But he chases after her to woo her back. He strips away all her benefits, in punishment, but it's just to show her that all the blessings don't come from the other lovers or the idols. All the blessings are from the Lord, and as she learns that, he returns them to her, with the added blessing of security in His love.

We stray from God like Gomer from Hosea. I chase after all these other lovers, thinking that they will give me security and affection, material benefits and position and influence. And when it all sours, He takes the benefits away from me so that I remember I'm dependent on Him. But what unimaginable joy: from the screwed-up relationship I tried to have with God, where it's businesslike and I try to be good in exchange for blessings, He draws me into a true intimacy, where the currency of the relationship is love instead of stuff. And then at the last day, He'll change it all again when we meet in at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb and He presents us to Himself, a pure and spotless Bride through the work of Christ. Yikes! Here's another example of the already and the not yet, buried in the weird names and soap-opera story of Hosea.

When Helping Hurts

2009-06-17T13:47:00.003-05:00

The book we used in our course on Christian community development is now available for purchase. I highly recommend it! We knew we wanted to start a new outreach ministry in our community, and we had some ideas about what would not work, based on our experience with disaster relief. This book was an eye-opener for sure. It offered some excellent guidance that clarified our muddy ideas and introduced some new ones. It challenged us to examine our sometimes paternalistic and arrogant attitudes. Best yet, it moved from very abstract theological principles to very practical steps for getting started.

You can find out more about it at the website: http://www.chalmers.org/when-helping-hurts/book.php If you decide to read it, make sure you also grab the free study guide and additional resources from the website - they round out the picture.

Mission on the Bay

2009-06-17T11:50:00.004-05:00

It's week 3 of my stint with Lutheran Episcopal Services in Mississippi (LESM). We're slowly getting accustomed to a new mode of work and new co-workers. I'm spending the majority of my time at the youth site in Bay St. Louis, called Mission on the Bay. This camp was established on the site of Christ Episcopal Church, a beachfront property that was destroyed in Katrina. Butch Jones is the man who pulled it together mostly, with the assistance of the charming Elizabeth, appointed rector at Christ Church after the storm. They courted and married, and spent their first 3 years of marriage in the thick of hurricane recovery. Last autumn, they moved to Alabama, but when LESM decided to do this transition, they asked Butch to come back and lend a hand this summer.

The storm surge covered this bell tower all the way to where the shingles give way to flashing.

An aerial image of the church property from the beach side, shortly after Katrina. Most of the debris has been removed.

This Quonset hut serves as the dining hall for Mission on the Bay. We have 5 huts, all loaned to the camp from the city. This one was used as the jail for a little while before it became part of the camp. One of the others was used to store historic record that were saved from the flooding; it's now a bunkhouse.

Mission on the Bay hosts primarily church youth groups. As such, it's a somewhat simpler place than the other camps I've seen. It sure makes ordering the food easy! We just do a cold breakfast and sack lunch. Dinner (excuse me, supper...Sabin keeps telling me dinner is what you eat at noon) is cooked over at the Lagniappe site; we pick it up and stash it in army-surplus hot-boxes, haul it back to camp and serve it in our Quonset-hut dining room. The reason we don't cook here: the kitchen is a fire-engine red concession trailer. It has an air conditioner, but the poor little machine can't keep up with the combination of an industrial stove, fryer, the heat rolling off the water tank and fridge, and Mississippi sunshine. We made dinner in there my second night here, and I thought I would melt.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...Lagniappe Church is now a tenant of LESM at the same site on Demontluzin Street. LESM has moved Camp Coast Care to the Demontluzin Street location. We moved the Lagniappe offices out into a converted bunkhouse to make space for LESM's offices in the main building. It feels strange not to see all our Lagniappe co-workers every day, but I think it's a healthy move for us. We're now forced to start moving from a staff-driven mode of ministry to a whole-congregation feeling, since there is no longer a big staff.

More later about our ministry ideas, my work at Mission on the Bay, and a Catahoula hound.

Sub-Creation and Serious Bread

2009-06-05T09:17:00.005-05:00

Last Saturday, I got up at a ridiculous hour and pulled on a yellow T-shirt. I picked up a truckload of Serious Bread and headed off to the farmers' market. Once I got the tent up, I was surrounded by other vendors with all sorts of delightful items:

* Tom the 'Mater Man, with tomatoes and peppers
* Gautier honey - buy it in the dripping comb, or civilised into a honeybear
* Blueberries, complete with the vendor's cute two-year-old attesting to the quality by sampling the wares at every opportunity
* Goat meat, goat cheese, and goat's-milk lotion
* Pralines
* Tasty baked goodies
* Heaps of summer squash, eggplant, and red potatoes
* Potted plants ranging from the showy tropicals to humble herbs
* Loose-leaf tea
* Olive oils, pesto and fresh pasta

I had a full load of Dale's Multigrain, Garlic Rosemary Sourdough, Sunflower Seed, Cinnamon Oatmeal Raisin, and Western French breads. Despite my doubts, by 1:30 pm, I had sold out!

Serious Bread is a fledgling local business. The Breadman is Al Jensen, a retired oceanographer with a mighty passion for good bread. His wife Vivian runs the business end of things. Together, they produce several varieties of truly amazing artisan bread and sell it at the Mockingbird Cafe and 4 local fresh markets. Al is very serious about his bread, its purity and healthfulness. He's always trying out new recipes and letting patrons of the Mockingbird sample them.

Sub-Creation
So here's why I think Serious Bread is interesting and important (besides the selfish fact that I like good bread):

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Genesis 1:26-28
The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. Genesis 2:15

God created Mankind to exercise creative stewardship over the Earth and everything in it. The way it's been explained to me, God created the world, and it was good. Everything was according to God's desire. Yet the world was not complete: God left room in it for Mankind to participate in creative work. And we have done so - look at all the wonderful art, music, literature, gourmet cooking, animal husbandry, and architecture that people have created, using the good gifts God provided. J.R.R. Tolkien called it sub-creation.

Then the Fall. The image of God contained in Man was marred. The goodness of the Earth itself was fractured. Yet the mandate remains: Mankind still has the charge and responsibility originally given in Eden. God still gives individuals gifts of creativity, vision, and authority. Here's what Tolkien says:

The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made. Mythopoeia

Our big problem now is that, since we're all sinful, we use our abilities, power, and the resources of the Earth to do wrongly and to produce things that are not beautiful, useful, or honoring to God, under whose authority we were designed to work. The reaction of Christians has often been to reject those areas where this is most obvious - one primary example being the arts. If music, dance, film, and visual art can be lewd, violent, and immoral, then we reject them.

Books about witches inspire teenage girls to try their hands at arcane practices, so careful parents ban any books containing elements of fantasy or witchcraft - thus eliminating everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and true occult manuals, to Harry Potter, the Wizard of Oz, and the Chronicles of Narnia. I'm sure you can think of many other examples.

But consider:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Colossians 1:15-20

It sounds to me like every area of life is under Christ's authority. "All things" must include art, music, dance, and film. If not, perhaps the verse would read "most things." If "all things" includes those listed (things visible and invisible, powers and authorities) then it must include the Internet, microbreweries, Hollywood, the Supreme Court, elections in Iran...ALL THINGS.

God's redemption of the world includes everything that was marred by the Fall. We know the phrase "already but not yet" but we often limit the concept to personal salvation. I am already claimed by Christ and justified by His blood, but I am not yet sanctified and complete. The same goes for the rest of Creation: God has already won the victory over sin and death, but the restoration is not yet complete. Even so, we can see God's work in all areas of life. He is not only working in missions and in the life of the church, but also in nations and families and communities. God is Lord of beauty and order, so anyone who works to bring those about is participating in His work - even if only to a limited extent, and with more or less awareness. While the broken system tends toward ugliness and chaos, anything of beauty, love and order has God's stamp on it.

Therefore, I am confident that God approves of Serious Bread. Whether or not the Breadman is a "Christian businessman," he is producing something of value and worth, creating something new using the good gifts provided by God as raw materials. He's also contributing to the value and richness of the local community by giving something for residents to brag about. By selling bread at local fresh markets, we participate in an activity that strengthens an orderly, vibrant local community. I imagine when we get to Heaven, we will see something that's been going on invisibly for a long time: Jesus sitting down for a long, friendly chat with a whole crowd of artists, chefs, architects, filmmakers, software writers, and people like Tom the 'Mater Man, Al the Breadman, and the little boy with blueberry stains on his fingers.

It's a good thing I'm getting a raise...

2009-06-05T09:06:00.002-05:00

...because I'm definitely working harder.

I am now an employee of Lutheran Episcopal Services in Mississippi (LESM), since Monday. We are working hard to nail down all the details of transferring LESM's Camp Coast Care to the Lagniappe site, but I am actually spending more time at LESM's Mission on the Bay camp, down by the beach here in Bay St Louis. The camp was without a site manager for a couple weeks, and it shows. Entropy had taken hold, especially in the pantry and kitchen. But there are 4 of us now, and we're fighting back!

I think this partnership will be a very good thing, and both Lagniappe and LESM will learn from it. The challenge is to connect the dots between two very different organizational styles. Lagniappe is egalitarian, informal, intimate, and flexible. LESM has a more 'corporate' feeling; it's more hierarchical, formal, professional, and established. There are benefits and drawbacks to both styles.

I won't bore you with all the details, but watch for pictures and stories soon!

National Day of Prayer

2009-05-29T07:34:00.002-05:00

My friend Kerry says, "I love it when others are articulate so I don't have to be." He re-posted an essay on his blog, and I'm going to re-re-post it here, because I think Brother Shane and Brother Jonathan have hit on something important:

Prayer Is More Than Lip Service
By Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Millions of Americans will gather today in hotel ballrooms and on town squares, in church buildings and on campus lawns for National Day of Prayer. Millions of other Americans will, no doubt, look on this public religious act with some suspicion. Is National Day of Prayer a hang-over from the days of the Religious Right? Are those who gather protesting President Obama's assertion that we are not a Christian nation, but a democracy that welcomes and protects the practice of diverse faith traditions?

As evangelical Christians, we admit that our fellow Americans have good reason to be suspicious. Though evangelicals have often argued fervently for the separation of church and state, we have also blurred the dividing line when access to political power served our agenda (and our pocketbooks). Even when our churches have tried to serve as the conscience of the state that Dr. Martin Luther King challenged us to be, our concern has been too narrowly focused on issues of private morality, overlooking the problems of systemic injustice that King himself so boldly challenged.

If we are going to pray in public, evangelical Christians must begin with a prayer of confession. We have shouted the gospel with our mouths more than we have showed the world good news with our lives. But our confession cannot be that we have over-stepped the boundary between private faith and the public square. The problem is not that Christians have been too public with our prayer. What we must confess is that we have done too little to become the answer to the prayers we pray. So often when faced with the problems of our world we have asked, "God, why don't you do something?" without realizing that God might be saying, "I did do something. I made you."

When prayed by followers of Jesus, "God bless America" cannot be a divine endorsement of a political agenda or an excuse for inaction (as if we were asking God to bless others so we don't have to). When we pray for God to bless anyone, we are challenged to see that we might be the hands of that blessing, for God has no hands but ours. When we pray Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, we commit our whole lives to caring for the least among us the unborn and the undocumented. If Christians are praying with Jesus, we cannot stop praying and acting until we see the restoration of all that is broken in our lives, and in our streets broken political systems and broken families, polluted ecosystems and shattered lives.

So, rather than argue that National Day of Prayer is something that should go away with Jerry Falwell and the Christian Coalition, we say keep it. Let's call Christians (and everyone else) to prayer. But let's also challenge ourselves to become the answer to our prayers. When we pray for the hungry, let's remember to feed them. When we pray for the unborn, let's welcome single mothers and adopt abandoned children. When we give thanks for creation, let's plant a garden and buy local. When we remember the poor, let's re-invest our money in micro-lending programs. When we pray for peace, let's beat our swords into plowshares and turn military budgets into programs of social uplift. When we pray for an end to crime, let's visit those in prison. When we pray for lost souls, let's be gracious to the souls who have done us wrong.

None of us can do everything, but everyone can do something. To begin to act on our prayers with any seriousness is to remember why we pray in the first place: because anything worth doing is beyond our power to do alone. We cry out to God because we know we need help. But God chooses to work in and through us. We have a God that does not want to change the world without us. So let us pray and let us act.

On Activism

2009-05-26T18:49:00.002-05:00

Just a nugget from the reading I'm doing for our class through the Chalmers Center:
"Activism is most fruitful when rooted in a growing understanding of who God is, how God has been working salvation in human history and individual lives, and the mission of the church." (Churches that Make a Difference, Sider, Olson & Unruh) One of the most important purposes of church leadership (pastors and elders) is "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ." (Ephesians 4:12). I appreciate the teaching of our pastors here - and others along my road - who are focused on that goal. It's pretty common for churchgoers to be recipients of grace, and that's as it should be. But we mustn't stop there, as I have done at many times! We're also to be conduits of grace to others, and our pastors and teachers are not just there to keep us fed and entertained! I pray God will never leave me in a plateau kind of state, but keep on growing me up into understanding of His kingdom so that I can be a channel or catalyst.

New Partners

2009-05-26T14:56:00.002-05:00

The news I've been sitting on for nearly a month is finally official: Lutheran Episcopal Services in Mississippi (LESM) is going to take over hosting volunteers at the Lagniappe site. We've been trying to work out something like this ever since (when was it? February?) we decided it was time to transition from out-of-town volunteer-based hurricane relief to local-folks-based community development. LESM operates a number of programs throughout the state, including 3 hurricane-relief volunteer camps. Two of those camps will be transferred here to Demontluzin Street; one in the next couple of weeks, and the other probably in the fall, after the big flush of high school groups during the summer. Meanwhile, they will continue to host the Habitat for Humanity groups as we've been doing.

Part of the deal includes employment offers for several of the Lagniappe staff, including myself, to keep on doing what we're doing (more or less). That's good news for several families! Personally, I'm happy to be able to stay employed at a job that's flexible, because it will allow me to stay involved in Lagniappe's mission. I'm also pleased that God's providence has worked this out, because although the cool, rational part of my mind trusts Him, the emotional, control-freak side of my mind has gone into panic mode a few times lately. So here's one more piece of ammunition against doubt for next time. No wonder the Old Testament keeps repeating, "remember!" We have to constantly be reminded that God brought his people to the Promised Land, delivered them from slavery, kept His promises - because every time a challenge comes up, we forget and don't trust Him to be faithful in the present instance.

On the Lagniappe front, we're working slowly through some very challenging concepts of community development. We're starting some tentative activities like chatting with the educators in our congregation, and updating our directory of other local agencies that provide services, so that we know what other assets are already available. I've been asking, "Is it possible to launch our first program by fall?" I'm still not sure, but we're trying to take the time to do it right, so that five years from now, if all of the present LPC staff have moved on, the program will still exist - because (we hope) the local long-term residents will have been invested in each step of the process.

That's all the news from Lagniappe, where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking (or at least handy with a hammer) and the children are all above average (really)! (Apologies to Garrison Keillor)

How do you eat a 747?

2009-05-21T08:02:00.000-05:00

One bite at a time.
It may sound odd, but we’re learning this from Nehemiah. By way of review, Nehemiah is the one who asked the Persian king for permission to go rebuild Jerusalem. All the prominent people of Israel were in captivity, Jerusalem was in ruins, and Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king.

The most wonderful thing about Nehemiah so far is in Chapter 2: Nehemiah admits, “I was very much afraid.” The king asks him what he wants, and Nehemiah writes, “Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king.” Why is Nehemiah afraid? Because he had a BHAG: a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (as in the popular management book, Good to Great). BHAGs are by nature scary. You wouldn’t want to meet one coming around a corner in a dark alleyway. Nehemiah was rightfully afraid of the audaciousness of his goal, the immense labor that would be involved in accomplishing it, and the power of the people who stood in a position to prevent him from even starting. But he didn’t stop with the fear. Nehemiah kept his eyes fixed on God. How do we know? Because in Chapter 1, he spent DAYS in prayer and fasting, checking in with God about this BHAG, but when he got in front of the king, Nehemiah didn’t just plunge ahead with his plan. He prayed again, knowing that only God could grant success.

The next thing Nehemiah did was almost as cool. He broke the BHAG down into Small Hairy Audacious Goals (picture the big scary monster divided up into a dozen or so little ones…still a handful, but no longer the stuff of nightmare…kind of like hyperactive third-graders). He got a safe-conduct from Persia to Jerusalem. He got permission to take timber from the king’s forest. He set a time-table.

In some ways, our situation at Lagniappe is like this. We have one heck of a BHAG: no less than the complete restoration of Bay St. Louis – structures, culture, families, relationships, public policy. We’re very much afraid. But I think this week the BHAG started to get broken down into some SmallHAGs. We can start with one program partnership with the school. We can start with taking a survey of the needs and assets of our congregation and the larger community.

What’s helping us with breaking the BHAG down into SmallHAGs is the class several of us are taking. It’s through the Chalmers Center at Covenant College, and they have some great resources for thinking about Christian community development. If your congregation is thinking it’s time to get more outward-focused, I recommend looking into it. You might start with a couple of books:
And You Call Yourself A Christian: Toward Responsible Charity, by Robert Lupton
Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road by Timothy J. Keller
Churches That Make a Difference, by Sider, Olson, & Unruh
We’re also reading When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…And Yourself, by Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert, but it’s not in print yet; we’ve gotten a preliminary version through the class.

Richard's Scones

2009-05-08T10:41:00.003-05:00

Ok, this really has nothing to do with the Kingdom, except that we are learning in our class that since Christ is Lord over all of creation, anything of beauty and worth is IN! Somebody smart said, "God made creation perfect, but not complete," leaving room for us to do some sub-creation after Him.

Richard, the finance guy here at Lagniappe, has been making the most wonderful orange-chocolate chip scones. I snagged the recipe (courtesy of the Cora Needham House on Bed & Breakfast Inns Online) from him as we made a batch yesterday.

4 c all-purpose flour
1 c granulated sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 c (6 oz) miniature chocolate chips
1 tbsp grated orange peel
1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 1/2 c buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp orange extract

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, and salt. Add chocolate chips and orange peel. Mix well. Cut in butter with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

In a small mixing bowl, combine the buttermilk, eggs, and orange extract. Pour wet mixture into dry ingredients. Mix only until a sticky dough is formed.

Drop by 1/4 cups or small ice-cream scoops onto greased baking sheets (actually, we put bakers' parchment on the baking sheets, no grease.) Bake 18-22 minutes in a regular 350 F oven, or 8 minutes in a convection oven. Bake only one sheet at a time.

For scrumptious glaze:
2 c confectioner's (powdered) sugar
1/4 c orange juice
1 tbsp grated orange peel
1 tsp orange extract

Combine in a small mixing bowl and mix until smooth. Let scones cool slightly, then drizzle glaze over them generously (we used one of those great silicone pastry brushes). Serve warm (but they're also great leftover - I had strawberries and a scone for breakfast today, yum!)

Volunteer Vacation

2009-05-07T07:23:00.004-05:00

I get a weekly email with grant opportunities, and the segment below was in it this morning. Anybody know someone who would love to come to the Gulf Coast as a hurricane-relief volunteer, but doesn't have the flexibility in their budget to swing it?

TRAVELOCITY'S TRAVEL FOR GOOD OFFERS FUNDING FOR VOLUNTEER TRAVEL OPPORTUNITIES
http://leisure.travelocity.com/Promotions/0,,TRAVELOCITY3915vacations_main,00.html
Travelocity's Travel for Good program offers the Change Ambassadors Grant to help support Americans who wish to travel to participate in volunteer opportunities (volunteer vacations). The program will help fund transportation and other costs of any trip organized by one of Travelocity's volunteer travel provider partners for individuals or groups chosen on the merit of their applications (including financial circumstances) and their ability to meet the grant requirements. Grants will
be awarded to people who have demonstrated long-term contributions through volunteering, but do not have the financial means to take a volunteer vacation.
The grant requires applicants to select a trip as part of the application process. Travelocity will award two grants of $5,000 per quarter. If the amount of the selected trip exceeds $5,000, the recipient(s) is responsible for paying the balance. Anyone can apply for the grant program, either as an individual or as part of a team. Individual and team leader applicants must be at least 18 years of age.

Idylls of Lagniappe

2009-04-29T10:02:00.003-05:00

It’s been a relaxing week. After madcap building for much of March and all of April, we’re on post-Spring-Break break. I decided to stick around town, partly to save money and partly because it would be a shame to leave South Mississippi during its most pleasant season. Everything is in bloom, and we’re in the hiatus between the worst of the no-see-ums and the start of the mosquito season. It’s warm enough that my cat is shedding like mad, but not hot enough for air-conditioning.

I’ve spent a ton of time working on a scrapbook project, and a few hours messing around in the garden (see pictures by copying the link on the right to visit my Picasa album). I also visited the Bellingrath Gardens in Mobile, which is the estate of a former soda-bottling baron, now a botanic garden. And I slipped over to Covington, LA for the farmer’s market where I got homemade Indian samosas (Yum! Not to be confused with the local citrus specialty, satsumas), a jar of sweet potato butter, and a quart of local strawberries. I spent one whole morning holding down a table at the Mockingbird Café, and will probably do that again. It’s like someone has said here before, the Mockingbird is the extension of everyone’s living room.

On the job front, we still don’t have a firm answer from Habitat for Humanity on whether they will become co-tenants and continue to host volunteers at the current Lagniappe facility, but it doesn’t look good. So if I want to stay connected with Lagniappe’s mission, I need to get busy securing some way to pay the rent and keep my cat in kibble. You may soon find me sporting an orange (or blue) Tool Depot apron or waving a waitress’ check pad, unless I can find something more appealing. You could pray for a well-timed opening at the library or some other clerical, nonprofit, or education-related gig.

I have no grand insights for you this week, only simple thoughts: Sabbath rest is good. Solitude is good. Helping friends is good, too.

In the absence of grand insights, how about a list-making exercise: what are the books (aside from the obvious: the Bible) that have most shaped your world-view? Here’s my short list:
Basic Christianity
The Great Divorce
Jesus For President
The Lorax
A Sand County Almanac
Sophie’s World
The Lord of the Rings
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
The More-With-Less Cookbook
The Prodigal God
Three Cups of Tea
Truth is Stranger than it Used to Be
The Weather Makers
Hind’s Feet on High Places
Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
Teaching as a Subversive Activity
assorted essays and poems by Wendell Berry
Ok, that’s not a very short list, but considering how many I could have included…not too bad. I wouldn’t be the same person if I hadn’t encountered these books. Do you have a list you want to share? Go to "View My Complete Profile", hover over the Email link and copy my email address into your email’s “To” field.

His wedding and her funeral

2009-04-13T08:36:00.003-05:00

Happy Easter to everyone!
This weekend, we celebrated with Ben and Sarah at their wedding in Fort Worth, TX. It was awesome! While we were there, Barbara and I visited the botanic gardens, which are gorgeous and quite large. The other girls went shopping; several pairs of cowgirl boots and a couple of hats came back with us to Mississippi! It was a lot of fun to join the bride and groom's families and friends as almost a third family: the Lagniappe contingent. Also fun to attend a wedding where you know both the bride and groom really well.

Anyway, I have never understood the Scripture passages about marriage. The feminist current in our culture just led me to chafe at the part about submitting. But we just went through this section in Ephesians in our Bible study, and Pr Jean's commentary both there and at this wedding was instructive:

Ephesians 5:21 - 33 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Pr Jean started his homily at the wedding with a story of another wedding he officiated at: Before they went into the sanctuary, the groom said to him, "Do you know why the bride wears white and the groom wears black?"
Pr Jean bit, of course. "Why is that?"
"Because it's her wedding and his funeral."

All jokes about marriage aside, this was particularly instructive. When marriage is a picture of Christ and his bride, the Church, a wife can submit to her husband without degradation as a person, because her husband loves her in such profound measure. The husband dies to himself and gives himself up for the wife, for her best interest. What woman wouldn't want to follow a man who loves like that? And as Pr Jean also pointed out, a wife is to submit to her husband in Christ; if he steps out from under the Lord's authority, she is not called to follow him into disobedience! It also does not say, "Women, submit to men," which is a common misunderstanding of Ephesians. My feminist tendencies are at once weakened and strengthened. And maybe, as I watch Ben and Sarah love each other, I get another glimpse of Christ's love for us.

Why would a church brew beer?

2009-04-08T08:42:00.002-05:00

Check out this article, http://www.saintpatrickpc.org/content/view/45/55/ for great comment on how church people get bound up by legalism that's not even Biblical. Here at Lagniappe, whenever someone mentions something like this, you'll see people raising their hands. It's not that they have a question, it's just our way of saying, "Me too!" None of us are alone in our sins, hangups, or temptations. I think it's healthy to acknowledge when we share someone's sin, because of the followup statement: Yeah, I'm a sinner, but I'm also saved by grace.

Update letter

2009-04-06T09:42:00.002-05:00

I'm sending out an update letter, and I feel so 21st-century! Some people are getting it by mail, yes, but others are reading it as an email attachment and you, my friend, get to read it as a blog post! Much of this will be old news for those who read my blog regularly...sorry. Here goes anyway:

April 6, 2009

Dear friends,
Greetings from Mississippi! I’ve been away from the Northeast for almost a year now, and enjoying the sunshine but missing all of you. So I thought I’d send out a note to tell you what I’ve been up to. I don’t think either you or I could have imagined what would come from the donation you gave to support me on my one-week hurricane relief trip over a year ago.

PDA Volunteer Village Manager
After one week volunteering to rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina, I knew I had to come back to the Gulf Coast. From last May through October, I was a Volunteer Village Manager for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA). My assignment was the volunteer village in Pearlington, Mississippi. Pearlington is an unincorporated cluster of homes where Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed nearly every structure. My role there was to take care of all the practical and logistical needs of volunteer teams (meals, maintaining the camp, communications, etc), while the construction manager, Jeremy, coordinated the home rebuilding projects.

Seeking the King: seeing Jesus in the faces of volunteers, local residents, coworkers
In the midst of all this work, I have made a conscious effort to watch for Jesus. As one of my friends at PDA says, “I am convinced that sometimes Jesus dresses up like a homeless person and goes around to His churches to check on how we’re doing.” When we are in the middle of helping people in need, we get to see Him more often. There’s not space here, but check my blog (seektheking-pda.blogspot.com) for lots of stories!

God’s Guiding Hand
I have sometimes joked that I wish God would post a big neon sign for me, to communicate His will. I don't think God uses neon much, but this might be as close as He gets. In October, an opportunity arose that I was not expecting, but I don't think God could be any clearer in saying, "This is the way; walk in it." Lagniappe Presbyterian Church in Bay St. Louis, MS, had an opening on the staff. Lagniappe is a little church plant with a big mission focus. Since Katrina, they’ve been a major player in the recovery effort in Bay St. Louis and Waveland. Between the congregation and the Presbytery, they support a volunteer camp and a strong partnership with the local Habitat for Humanity office. As I write, approximately 140 volunteers are leaving after a successful week of rebuilding homes, and 173 are on their way for next week.

Although I’ve been on staff here for only 5 months, already there’s change coming. I have been helping host the volunteers and manage administrative/office duties. But at the end of May, Lagniappe will stop hosting volunteers and transition from hurricane relief to community development.

Participating in the Restoration: Lagniappe
Please see the Lagniappe website (www.lagniappechurch.com) for lots more on this, but here’s the basic idea:
There are certainly still people in town who need homes built or restored, but many of them can be best served by Habitat for Humanity or commercial builders. Many need to get their finances in order before they take on home ownership. So we started asking some questions:

What are the needs that existed here before Katrina?
What could be done to meet the needs?
What should we be doing?
What will it take for us to do that?

We came up with some answers, and they are both scary and exciting. Based on our existing location, relationships in the Bay-Waveland area, staff skills and passions, we are hoping to launch several programs:

Tutoring/mentoring program in the local high school
Financial and life-skills counseling
Apprenticeship program in the construction trades
‘Traditional’ congregation-based youth ministry

Jordan Sikkema, our construction manager, has prayed one thing consistently: "Lord, frustrate our plans that are not yours and put your plans in place." He usually adds, "...and Lord, you know I hate praying this prayer." We are all praying like this right now. Specifically, I am hoping that my future will remain linked with Lagniappe for a while longer, maybe getting involved in some educational part of the ministry and helping write grants to support our efforts. Who would have thought I’d wind up in Mississippi?

I absolutely covet your prayers for us at this time. Pray that God will continue to make his way plain before our eyes. Pray that we are able trust Him to provide for us, so that we can avoid worrying and focus all our attention on the tasks before us. I’m so thankful for your support and encouragement. I hope you all are well and head-over-heels in love and awe of our mighty Lord.

In Christ,
Heather Dungey

The Biggest Loser

2009-03-21T08:24:00.003-05:00

Still no digest of the load of new ideas running around in my head. So you'll have to live with this aside until I can get it together.

Much of what I'm reading is about Christian community development. One of the authors described a sort of hierarchy of benevolence from Jewish tradition, from least to most worthy:

Give a needy person help with his full knowledge that it's you.
Give help anonymously.
Give a needy person a job with his full knowledge that you're the patron.
Arrange the job without the person knowing you're behind it.

Then he proposed a sort of matrix of Christian ministry efforts:

Community betterment (soup kitchens, clothes closets, after-school recreational
activities) sponsored by leaders from outside the target community.

Community development (job training and placement program, teen leadership development, grocery co-op) sponsored by leaders from outside the community.

Community betterment led by indigenous leaders from within the community.
Community development led by indigenous leaders from within the community.

Again, it's the whole "Give a man to fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him until the pond is fished out. Then you have to either get into the business of stocking ponds, or start teaching aquaculture," thing. You can meet a need (good) or you can help the needy learn to help themselves, thus building up dignity, community capacity, and a solid foundation for the future (better).

I was in Pearlington a couple times this week, and I really saw this concept played out. Pearlington is in desperate need of community development. One of the local residents mentioned how there is a lovely new community center going up, and one already in existence that sits empty most of the time. There are only a handful of community leaders who take the initiative to start things up, and most of them are wearing the faces of the over-burdened and exhausted. They have been bearing the load since Katrina, and it might be approaching time for them to pass the torch on to a new team. But who's the next leg? What will happen in Pearlington once the volunteer relief groups wrap up their work? Will the drug dealers and fighting-dog breeders take over? Will generous neighbors take over the job of giving a free meal where it's needed and running the elderly and disabled into town to pick up their prescriptions?

Here's a fun NPR story about a locally-led initiative: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102048542 Someone started something small, there was a large felt need, and it grew into something bigger that's impacting the whole community. Imagine if your home church saw a local need, started up something small, and got congregation members interacting with people outside the church walls. Then you saw another, related need and started doing something about it. Then, once people trusted you and knew you as the church that helps them with real, practical stuff, you casually invited them to check out Sunday worship. Or they asked you, "Why are you people always so nice?" and you answered, "We're not perfect, we just love Jesus and we're trying to figure out how to love people the way He does." And then you shut your mouth and kept serving spaghetti (or sorting clothes or whatever) until they asked the next question! What then?

A day in the life of... Part II

2009-03-19T13:01:00.002-05:00

A while ago I gave you a typical PDA day, so it has occurred to me that you might be curious about a typical Lagniappe day. Here goes:

5:15 AM - Alarm goes off. I ignore it. 5 minutes later, my cat functions as the snooze alarm. Hungry!
6:00 AM - Tea and Bible, then stretch and pray.
7:00 AM - Oatmeal and email at Lagniappe.
7:30 AM - Sleepy mood transmogrifies to hustle-bustle as people get up from breakfast and prepare for the workday. I direct the kitchen cleanup.
8:15 AM - Everyone heads out for work. Food delivery arrives.
8:30 - 10:30 AM - Cleanup. Check the restrooms, the offices, the porch. Wash the cleaning rags. Construction manager in a panic because he needs one more project for tomorrow, and is waiting on an inspection. Inspector failed to show yesterday.
10:30 AM - Tea break. Chat with kitchen staff. Clean house up above the kitchen. Why did someone give us 4 cases of fabric softener samples? And the peanut butter... I thought we got rid of all the expired, donated peanut butter last month, but we missed a bunch!
11:00 AM - Research grants that might support our future ministries. Not yet sure exactly what I'm looking for, but it's somewhere in the conjunction of community development, high school dropout prevention, job training, and financial education.
12:00 - Sit down for lunch with staff. Construction manager elated, the inspection went through and another organization just gave us a ready-to-build job.
12:30 PM - Pick up 2 trays of donuts donated by Nella's. Carry them into the building and fend off the predatory, hungry boys long enough to set the trays down.
1:00 PM - Set up team folders, bunkhouse assignments, chore assignments for next week. Give summary of numbers for each meal to kitchen staff. Send out minutes from the staff meeting.
2:00 PM - Reading for future ministries: I have a huge reading list!
3:00 PM - Knock off for a couple hours. Visit the library. Go for a bike ride.
5:00 PM - House parent duty. I'm only on once a week, since there are enough staff here to rotate. Serve dinner, chitchat, hear about work projects.
7:30 PM - Finish dinner cleanup. Head home for relaxation and maybe work on my scrapbook project. Cat rolls over on doormat in the pose that, in a dog, means "Rub my belly!" In a cat, or at least my cat, this means, "Throw me that catnip mouse. Touch my belly, you die!"
9:30 PM - Head towards bed. More reading.

Here's my reading list:

Ministries of Mercy, by Timothy Keller
The Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller
And You Call Yourself a Christian: toward responsible charity, by Dr Robert Lupton
Living God's Politics: Putting your faith into action, by Jim Wallis
The Politics of Jesus, by John Howard Yoder
The God of Intimacy and Action: Reconnecting ancient spiritual practices, evangelism and justice, by Tony Campolo
The Five Points of Calvinism, Defined, Defended, Documented, by David N. Steele, Curtis C. Thomas, and S. Lance Quinn

Never a dull moment!

Whose job is it?

2009-03-12T14:15:00.002-05:00

As we've been thinking about new ministry directions here at Lagniappe, I've been hearing a lot of disparaging comments about the welfare state. I've also been hearing a lot about moving from betterment activities (clothes closets, soup kitchens, etc) that give help away for free - to community development that helps people do for themselves. You know, the whole "give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats until the pond is fished out, then you have to either restock the pond or start teaching aquaculture," thing.
So here's my question for today: Whose job is it to assist the poor? I just saw an argument that it is, at least partly, the government's job: it was based on Psalm 72.

Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness.
He will judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with justice.
The mountains will bring prosperity to the people, the hills the fruit of righteousness.
He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.
He will endure as long as the sun, as long as the moon, through all generations.
He will be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth.
In his days the righteous will flourish; prosperity will abound till the moon is no more.
He will rule from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.
The desert tribes will bow before him and his enemies will lick the dust.
The kings of Tarshish and of distant shores will bring tribute to him; the kings of Sheba and Seba will present him gifts.
All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him.
For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help.
He will take pity on the weak and the needy and save the needy from death.
He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight.
Long may he live! May gold from Sheba be given him. May people ever pray for him and bless him all day long.
Let grain abound throughout the land; on the tops of the hills may it sway. Let its fruit flourish like Lebanon; let it thrive like the grass of the field.
May his name endure forever; may it continue as long as the sun. All nations will be blessed through him, and they will call him blessed.
Praise be to the LORD God, the God of Israel, who alone does marvelous deeds.
Praise be to his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen.

What do you think? Does the king in this Psalm translate to the government? Is it Jesus? In the case of the Church which is Christ's body, is it us? What else does this Psalm tell us about authority and our relationship to it?

I am an idolater

2009-03-09T09:06:00.008-05:00

Chances are (pretty much 100%), you are, too. I had an interesting conversation with the sweet lady who's helping in the kitchen this week, about idolatry. It seems her thoughts and mine have been running in tandem lately. She heard a radio story about a young man who decided riding in cars and other vehicles wasn't good - pollutes the air and all that. So he stopped. Then he decided that all his talking wasn't adding any value to the world, so he stopped. After walking all over the country and into South America, not talking to anyone, he eventually realized that the boundaries he had set on himself - while possibly good ideas at the outset, had now become a destructive bondage, keeping him from family and relationships and other important parts of life.

Perhaps you and I don't go to such extremes. We think of ourselves as God-fearers. We don't visibly bow down to images made of wood or stone. But we are idolaters nonetheless, because we are all capable of turning any thing into an idol. Anything, whether our religious practice, our self-image, our family, our success at work or school, can take God's place as the source of our identity and security. For example, I have an idol called "I am a good employee." Anytime someone says or does something that I interpret as a challenge to this idol, I react to protect it. This causes me to say dumb things! So my idolatry causes relational problems. If I were resting securely in God's providence and the truth that I can do nothing good apart from Him, this would not happen.

What are your idols? Pr. Jean suggests that any time we feel anxiety or strife, we can chase that emotion back to its source, and most of the time the source is an idol. Makes me feel like a pagan as I start to identify these things - how 'bout you?

Picasa Album

2009-02-21T08:22:00.003-06:00

I just added a little slideshow of some pictures I took on the beach last week. To see all those photos, plus others from Lagniappe, my little place in Waveland, Pearlington, the Adirondack Museum, a camping trip in upstate NY, and more, visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/striderlynn

Blogs I follow

2009-02-20T14:41:00.002-06:00

See the list on the right-hand side of this page for blogs that I enjoy following. These are written by friends and co-workers with some funny, insightful and sometimes heart-wrenching thoughts about faith and life.

Beads & Broccoli

2009-02-16T09:46:00.004-06:00

Lots of good stuff going on lately. I think God has been providing distractions so I don't brood upon the upcoming changes. Last week, Elizabeth and I went to the flea market on Menge Ave near Gulfport. I got a great wall art piece, all weathered and rustic looking. Elizabeth picked up a cool window and a plant stand; then on Friday there was a chili cookoff in the Bay to benefit the Rotary club. Lagniappe's chili and broccoli-cheese-jalapeno cornbread didn't win prizes, but Elizabeth did sell her lovely flower arrangement that she made with the new plant stand!

Saturday we all got together for dinner at the girls' house, and it was good to just be around everyone and share conversation. I also decided to make myself a new purse, since my old one is falling to pieces. Considering I was making it up as I went along, it came out pretty well.

Sunday, I went to my first Mardi Gras parade, hosted by the Krewe of Nereids here in BSL. It was okay, but it actually was not as much fun as digging a garden plot later with the girls. We're all plotting (ha-ha) to grow some veggies. It still amazes me that you can even dig in the soil at this time of year, never mind plant crops, but if we wait much longer it will start getting too hot for all the things I want to grow - cool season things like lettuce and broccoli.

frustrate our plans that are not yours

2009-02-12T10:03:00.002-06:00

I think it is time that I stop making plans and assumptions about the future. I have been wrong about so many things in the past year and a half, it's not even funny. God always has something in mind that is quite different than what I think. This week, it's happening again. The Lord is making His way plain to our eyes. Visit http://www.lagniappechurch.com/, read the announcement there, then come back and read the rest of my blog.

I am both terrified and excited about this. On the one hand, there is the uncomfortable possibility that I may be unemployed by June. Never a happy thought, but especially now when the floundering economy makes jobs scarce. On the other hand, I would love to be involved in whatever is next. If God has prepared my background and training for this purpose, it would be a pretty slick plan.

There have been so many times when I have cried out to God for guidance and didn't feel as if I received it. I have been guilty of distrusting God's leading and provision, and trying to make my own way. But listen to Isaiah:

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:
"In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it. You said, 'No, we will flee on horses.' Therefore you will flee! You said, 'We will ride off on swift horses.' Therefore your pursuers will be swift! A thousand will flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you will all flee away, till you are left like a flagstaff on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill."
Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!
O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

An Embarrassment of Riches

2009-02-11T11:09:00.002-06:00

Some weeks are just more full of life than others. It's funny how I can go for days and not have much to say here, then a whole bunch of things hit me at once.

So I had another Jesus-in-my-neighbor sighting this morning. I was talking to one of the ladies associated with Lagniappe; let's call her Darcy for privacy's sake. She's had a very hard row to hoe since Katrina; one blow after another followed on the heels of the storm, and it's not over yet. Darcy is a perfect example of how the devastation of the hurricane was not limited to physical destruction, but rippled out into mental health, family, employment, housing, and deep spiritual implications.

As we were talking today, she told me about a project she's been carrying out since her oldest children (the eldest daughter is now married, the youngest is 6) were in grade school: stealth clothing donations. Darcy says her family never had money for nice clothes when she was growing up, and it was a contributing factor in her shyness and isolation. So when her family had enough money and to spare, she made sure her kids had stylish, well-fitting clothes. Then, once or twice a year, she would tell them: It's time. Let's go through your things and pull out what you don't wear anymore. Then she would challenge them to think: is there anyone at school or church that doesn't seem to have nice things to wear? Anyone your size? Darcy's eyes lit up as she described her children's excitement when they realized they could possibly help a classmate. Then Darcy would track down the family's address, and they would sneak over, drop a bag full of clothes on the front porch, knock on the door and run away.

Darcy also tells her kids, every day, to go into school and look for people who seem alone, or sad, and greet them, give them a pat on the back, or ask about their day. From her description, this is something that will stick with them all their lives. This is something she also describes as life-saving for her, personally: there have been several times when a short phone call or a smile from an acquaintance have saved her from acts of desperation.

You remember that movie, Pay it Forward? Darcy does this all the time. She has incredible faith that, if God is putting her through so many difficulties, it must be for a purpose, and she knows - at least in general terms - what that is. It's so she understands and is strengthened to help others in similar situations. She's not limited to compassion, but can move straight to empathy and taking actions that will encourage and minister. Awesome. You never do know where Jesus is going to show up.

Date night

2009-02-11T06:22:00.000-06:00

I just started reading Praise Habit: Finding God In Sushi and Sunsets, by David Crowder. I knew it would be good when I discovered the comments on the copyright page. “Unless otherwise identified, all Scripture quotations in this publication are taken from The Message Remix, copyright 2003… Unless otherwise identified, all hummus references are taken from a conversation I had in 2003 and are in fact references to hummus, the food that ‘renders all others obsolete’…Unfortunately, there are no hummus references in this book, but it should be kept readily in mind.” Christian writers who can laugh at themselves are usually worth reading.

Not too far into the book, Crowder quotes from a conversation between Dallas Willard, author of The Divine Conspiracy, and some other theological types. They’re talking about how religious language can get stale, rote and meaningless. They point out how putting familiar Scripture or prayers into our own words can help us look at them in a new way. Crowder says, “There’s a cycle that takes place where we find/experience a spiritual habit that brings connection and meaning, but eventually even that thing will get stale and something else will need to find its way in.” Ritual and spiritual disciplines or habits carry the danger of towing us into a mindset of works righteousness, where I feel holy because I have a prayer time every day, but I’m not listening to God because I’m so caught up in my little ritual. But abandoning liturgy, ritual or discipline carries dangers, too. It can lead us into that “Me and Jesus” mindset where we forget the importance of bearing fruit, of developing relationships with others, and we set up our own preferences or impulses as idols.

So I had this lovely thought as I was reading: what if I viewed my so-called quiet time with God as if it were a dating relationship? I think there are some great parallels. As we know, Christianity is based on a love relationship. Like in dating, it’s great to have an old standby. For me, the dinner-and-a-movie of my time with God is a nifty book called Face to Face: Praying the Scriptures for Intimate Worship. Every day it provides Scripture-based meditations and prompts, kind of like journaling prompts, for adoration, confession, petition, intercession, thanksgiving, and renewal.

But dating would get old if you did the same thing every Friday night. Sometimes you need to shake it up, try something a little different, maybe even risky. Go roller skating, fly a kite, serve dinner at a homeless shelter. Ice skating might be fun, or your date might fall down all the time and be miserable. Singing praise songs in the car might be an awesome expression of worship, or the guy in the next lane might stare and think you’re nuts.

In dating, sometimes one person picks and plans, sometimes the other. If you normally plan your Bible reading right before bed, what would happen if you were open to God-time at other times of day? What if you go out for a run in the morning, and are so struck by the beauty and tragedy of the world that you have to sit down on the curb and talk to God about it right then? I wasn’t brought up in a church that taught much about the Holy Spirit, but I am slowly learning that He loves that kind of thing.

I also wasn’t brought up in a congregation where physical expression was part of worship. We didn’t even ‘sit to listen, stand to praise, and kneel to pray’ like the Episcopalians. Heck, we didn’t even go forward for Communion. But lately I’ve been influenced by a little Lutheran pamphlet called Stretch And Pray. Once I clear out the buzzing thoughts of the day, and stretch my back while I’m at it, it’s amazing how focused I can be when I kneel (actually bowing my face right down to the floor) to pray. Shocking, I know. Next thing, I’ll be waving my arms around or even (gasp!) clapping in church.
Hmm, so I thought I’d get back to my theme of the parallels between a dating relationship and my relationship with God, but I just wrapped up a paragraph about being physical. Let’s just not go there, shall we? Suffice it to say, I may be trying out some new date ideas soon. How about:
* Sunrise on the beach with praise music on my Fakepod…or just the sound of the waves and wind
* Dusting off the Book of Common Prayer for the morning or evening ritual, and for gorgeous KJV-style intercessions and thanksgivings on various topics
* Lectio Divina: Read, think, pray, live (this is the next part in Praise Habit, and something I’ve wanted to learn about for a while)
* Straight through one of the Gospels or epistles. I remember how awesome it was to read Romans straight through during college. Funny how I can devour hundreds of pages of a novel, but I balk at a column or two of Scripture.
* Free-association journaling: I know I don’t listen for God often enough. But if I just sit still, my brain goes tumbling down the rabbit hole, chasing a dozen different thoughts. So maybe pen and paper can help me chill out and wait for the quiet voice to speak inside my head. Our pastor in Ohio said he kept a little notebook nearby when he read the Bible and prayed, and when situations or people came to mind he’d jot them down and consider that an instruction from the Spirit to pray or to take action: to chat with the person or check into the situation. Sounds good to me, anyway.

So what are you doing, still reading this lame blog? Don’t you have a date tonight?

The Fiery Furnace

2009-02-05T10:47:00.002-06:00

This morning I was about to pray for my friend Jeremy, who's sick with pancreatitis. I was suddenly reminded of the story in Daniel of the 3 Hebrew youths who were chucked into the fiery furnace.

Nebuchadnezzar responded and said to them, "Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? Now if you are ready, at the moment you hear the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery and bagpipe and all kinds of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, very well. But if you do not worship, you will immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire; and what god is there who can deliver you out of my hands?"
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. "If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up."

They had such conviction and faith! I'm jealous! What faith they must have had, to be faced with what looked like certain death and to say, "I know God is powerful enough to do anything. But even if He does not save me the way I want Him to, I will still serve Him, because I trust that His will is right even when it looks terrible to me."

So I prayed for Jeremy: God is powerful and merciful enough to completely heal Him at a word. Or to arrange circumstances so he can be seen promptly by a wonderful doctor who can treat him effectively. Or to grant peace to his mind as he endures this chronic illness. I prayed for all of these things, and then had to acknowledge before God that, even if He does not do any of those things, His will shall be done. I pray that whatever the outcome, God will grant knowledge and wisdom to Jeremy and his sweet parents & sisters, to see what the good in it might be. Because we know that God works all things together for good for them that love the Lord and are called according to His purpose; therefore whatever suffering is ordained, it must have a perfect and holy purpose in God's will. I just pray that they (and I) will be allowed to know it. I think this is the furnace for our lives today: to wait in hope for the Lord and for the revealing of all wisdom. It's not a comfortable place to hang out, but there is One who keeps us company there:

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astounded and stood up in haste; he said to his high officials, "Was it not three men we cast bound into the midst of the fire?"
They replied to the king, "Certainly, O king."
He said, "Look! I see four men loosed and walking about in the midst of the fire without harm, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods!" Then
Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the furnace of blazing fire; he responded and said, "Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, come out, you servants of the Most High God, and come here!"
Then Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came out of the midst of the fire. The satraps, the prefects, the governors and the king's high officials gathered around and saw in regard to these men that the fire had no effect on the bodies of these men nor was the hair of their head singed, nor were their trousers damaged, nor had the smell of fire even come upon them.
Nebuchadnezzar responded and said, "Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants who put their trust in Him, violating the king's command, and yielded up their bodies so as not to serve or worship any god except their own God.

Jean's thoughts on prayer

2009-01-23T09:40:00.003-06:00

Pr. Jean just sent this around to the Lagniappe staff. We've been thinking about prayer a lot lately. Someone asked him for some thoughts for another project, and this is what he sent:

I don't think I ever really prayed before Lagniappe. Prayer had always been an ecclesiastical exercise done to emulate the saints of old, the Puritans or really 'spiritual' people who may be modern, but if I was honest, who were kind of weird. As we became more desperate and needy, we began to pray. Somewhere in our desperation we began to pray- not according to a formula or religious pattern, but according to need. In those desperate cries we met a God who was pleased to hear us cry out. He seemed to enjoy our need. He seemed to be drawn to our desperation. What I have come to understand about prayer is that, at it's base, it is a posture of humility. It is a place where we declare that we are out of options, out of resources and without hope, without a Father. I was never 'needy' enough to 'need' Him. The blessing of Katrina was that no amount of contacts, money, fund raising or phone calls would suffice to meet our needs- that left us with just Him. He answered and answered and answered. We had falsely relegated the God who responds in profound ways to church history, but in our new found reliance we met Him. He wasn't merely some historically-reliable divine resource. He was an active, living, capable and involved Father. We went from praying as a 'last resort' to praying as a 'first priority'. We often reminisce and say that when we'd pray for rain, we'd leave the house with an umbrella. I could recount to you countless 'miracles' over our time here, but even as I write this I find myself fondly remembering the 'early days' and realizing that we pray less now. The greatest obstacle to prayer has to be us. We drift toward self-reliance, self-sufficiency and pride. We now have a staff, church members, a budget and something that resembles a building. We are good at what we do. We have become a resource for other relief agencies. We help OTHER people. The truth is that now we pray less. We are relied upon, not relying. We are leaned on, not leaning. We help others. We're not so helpless anymore. The lack of prayer in my life is not a problem of self-discipline. It is a problem of pride. To pray is to declare myself resourceless; helpless; needy and broken- a declaration that I am not fond of making. It is one that WE, at Lagniappe, are not fond of making. It sounds good in sermons, but not in life. God is pleased however to bring little Katrinas into our lives. Katrinas named cancer, divorce, sickness, disappointment, failure and grief. Those blessings come to the front door of our lives as unwelcome guests, but they bring with them need, dependence and reliance upon Him. In a very real way they act as 'matchmakers' reintroducing us to the God we always knew was there, but had somehow forgotten. I used to furl my brow in confusion when people suffering with cancer would tell me that they 'wouldn't trade it for anything' because of what it had taught them. I now understand. They never seemed to be able to verbalize exactly what the lesson was. I now understand. The lesson wasn't a 'something' we learn. It was 'someone' we already knew, but had forgotten." Okay, that is my stream of consciousness on prayer.
Blessings and love.
Thanks for asking the question and making me realize this morning just how much
I had drifted toward me.
Smeagul and Gollum at once,
Jean

Isn't that awesome? And convicting? I think God is starting to deal with me pretty strongly on my pride. You know how, when the same thing comes up more than three or four times in a row, in different contexts, you sort of get the hint that God wants you to pay attention? Should be an interesting time. Here's hoping I get it this time and don't have to take this class over again too soon.

Read Romans 13:1-2

2009-01-20T07:37:00.002-06:00

I woke up this morning to some very excited voices streaming from my clock radio. The NPR correspondents in Washington are about to burst the buttons on their winter coats. Before I got to work, I think I heard the phrase "first African-American president" about fourteen times. There's no denying the enthusiasm.

I am so proud of my church family here in the Bay. Many of them are staunch Republicans, who would never dream of supporting anyone but a pro-life candidate, regardless of any of the candidate's other positions. Despite that fact, they have united to pray for the safety of Barack Obama and his family. Curt and Jean, our pastors, have mentioned several times that if we believe in God's sovereignty, we are obligated to believe that He has placed Mr. Obama in authority for His own purposes, and that to resist his authority is to oppose God. We have given thanks for a nation where transfers of power, even between opposites on the political spectrum, occur peacefully.

Here's a neat story of the kind of thing that gives me hope for "change we can believe in" - there's a program training the homeless and former convicts in culinary arts, and they're helping prepare food for various inaugural events. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99540954 Regardless of who's in office and whether or not you agree with them, we can participate in step by step efforts to solve problems and help our brothers and sisters.

Homelessness

2009-01-14T14:52:00.002-06:00

It's been a rough week and a half for Misti, who works the front desk at Lagniappe. It's incredible to me, but the effects of the economic crisis are already showing up here in the Bay. A steady stream of people have come in since the New Year, almost all asking for assistance with power bills (some with rent) and almost all having been laid off at a local manufacturing plant. Misti has a full schedule of appointments to assess their needs and meet with the church diaconal committee, which decides whether to give financial assistance to each individual or family, and if so, how much.

Following Murphy's Law, of course this spike of electrical shutoffs comes in the coldest week of the winter so far. Granted, the temperatures here are nothing like what we get up North, but with daily lows ranging from 27 to 55 degrees, it's cold enough to be serious if you don't have heat.

Compounding this issue, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the MEMA cottages. The temporary housing units are supposed to go away in March, and the local governments are wrestling with how to deal with them. The state is willing to sell them to families, but nobody seems sure whether local zoning regulations permit them to stay. It seems clear at this point that at least some of the families will be left with no place to live when their MEMA cottages are gone. There is not enough housing in the area to meet the need, certainly not enough low-rent units. So in addition to the homeless individuals already here, those living in overcrowded conditions with family or friends, and those in inadequate, incomplete or unrepaired homes, there will be a whole new population of homeless, probably including a lot of families with kids, elderly, and citizens who just don't have the personal resources to navigate the system.

It's wrenching to sit in a meeting and ponder: should we pay part of a bill if there is no income flowing to the household, so that they will be in the same situation again next month? Or should we reserve our limited funds for situations in which there is a short-term or one-time shortfall in the family finances? If we aid someone who is not working (but seems capable of doing so), is that really a help, or does it encourage them to remain dependent on others when they don't need to be? James 1:27 teaches us that "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress..." But this experience seems to prove the point, "You will always have the poor among you."

On the positive side, I heard something awesome from the local Habitat for Humanity director. There's an annual radio broadcast called the Homelessness Marathon which will be broadcast from Hancock County in February, and aired on NPR as well as other radio stations around the country. The focus will be Waveland, MS, which is right next door to us here in BSL. This ought to draw some additional attention to the issues we face here. Check out the website, www.homelessnessmarathon.org

The other encouragement is that the volunteers keep flowing. God is providing a steady stream of groups here at Lagniappe, and I just talked to Jessi in Pearlington - January is quiet there but she says bookings pick up in February and don't let up through the spring. It sure isn't fast, but we are adding homes to the community, one sheet of drywall at a time.

And, just to wrap up with an amusement, I have to tell you: tidying up after construction volunteers is a funny thing. They're a conscientious lot: they rarely make a mess in the showers. But the other day after lunch I picked up a speed square, a Habitat for Humanity hoodie, and several nail aprons full of sawdust and pencil stubs. I had to laugh: it's good work.

Readings

2009-01-07T11:28:00.002-06:00

It's a wealth of reading material this week. I just discovered an intriguing fiction author, Barbara lent me 3 books by Ravi Zacharias and one by George MacDonald, my mom sent me home from the holidays with the Dead Sea Rules. I started listening to a novel about a search and rescue worker and her dog, which I now need to find in print. And finally, yesterday I picked up a book of metaphysical poets, including George Herbert. I was introduced to his works when we sang the following as a communion hymn when I was in the church choir in Houghton. He clearly had a gift for rendering spiritual experience in common language:

LOVE (III) by George Herbert

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

The other night I heard an NPR story about 2 women who reached adulthood without learning to read. I can't imagine the richness I would miss in this life if I couldn't read!

Gifts from my parents

2008-12-30T18:13:00.003-06:00

I got some pretty nifty Christmas gifts this year, not least being safe arrival in Central New York before Christmas Eve, despite serious airline troubles. Even my baggage made it, only 12 hours after I did! But the best gifts are the ones my parents gave me, slowly and consistently, all the years I was growing up in this house.

My brother and I were comparing notes about how many people can't write in proper English. I asked him, "How is it that you and I went through the same school system as all our peers, but we know how to put together a sentence and punctuate it correctly?" He pointed out that we READ, a habit established early by our mother. She read books to us, at bedtime and naptime and every other opportunity. When we started reading ahead of her in the chapter books, she took us to the public library, where we weekly hauled home enough books to make a 6-foot wall across the living room. The love of reading is one of the better gifts I've ever received.

One of the gifts from my father is learning to buy the best quality stuff I can afford. I was reminded of this lesson yesterday. Dad pointed out that if I want my leather boots to last half a lifetime, I have to take care of them. In this case, that means scrubbing off the Mississippi mud and some flecks of concrete, grease them up with neat's foot oil (I do not know what a neat is or whether any neats are harmed in the production of said oil, but I'll find out), then apply Snow-Seal, not that there is much snow in MS.

My parents also taught me to love the Lord and his people, and they keep on teaching me this all the time. They're up to their necks in love, and for them love is certainly a verb. Love equals passing under the scrutiny of a prison guard every Tuesday night in order to sing and study the Bible with prisoners. It equals tromping out in the snow with a bunch of hyperactive Cub Scouts. Love is taking someone's spot helping at the soup kitchen so the other person can look after a sick relative at home. Love is freezing your toes off ringing a bell for the Salvation Army, and it's burning your finger on caramel corn for the breakfast club. Sometimes love equals having a tough conversation with the leaders of the church about a poor decision made.

The stuff I'm reading in the Westminster Confession (yep, still plowing through it, and sometimes arguing with it) is played out in my folks' lives and I'm so grateful for their example. Christmas gifts that you can wrap up and place under the tree are nice, but the best gifts are the people God gives us and the lessons they teach us day by day.

Blitz Build

2008-12-19T16:34:00.002-06:00

Just had to put the word out, the college fellowship Blitz Build is nearly over and you should check out the photos at http://www.lagniappechurch.com/slideshow/1388
It's been amazing to watch the houses quickly take shape - they went from the foundation where I helped pour concrete and lay out plates, to a complete shell, in this one week. They are framed, sided, trimmed, painted, and roofed. One of the Larroux girls asked at lunch, "If it's so much faster, why don't they do all the houses as a blitz?" We laughed and pointed out that, although that would be great, the construction staff would probably keel over after the first 3 in a row.
Praise God for stamina, safety, and success!

Lagniappe Pictures

2008-12-17T09:00:00.001-06:00

A couple of photos from around Lagniappe. For those still wondering just where I'm working, Lagniappe was launched as a mission church of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) under the leadership of Pr. Jean Larroux (III, as he notes every Sunday on his "Hello, my name is..." sticker).

To quote from one of the informational pieces,

Lagniappe Presbyterian church was planted in January 2006 in response to the physical and spiritual destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Lagniappe is not a construction company. Lagniappe is a church. We exist to participate in the restoration of the Mississippi Gulf Coast through the declaration and demonstration of the love of God shown to us in Christ Jesus. Lagniappe is passionate about these two facets of Christianity: declaration and demonstration. Declaration without demonstration leads to fundamentalism. Demonstration without declaration is liberalism. We are jealous to see these two inextricably joined together. We proclaim the love of Christ, and we accompany that proclamation with the unassailable apologetic of life.

The front desk. One of Lagniappe's ministries, in addition to home construction, is giving financial or in-kind assistance with rent, utilities, food, and baby/child supplies. There's a young lady who works here at the desk, taking requests and passing them to the diaconal committee for approval. She loves her job, and it's a great experience for her as she works toward her social work degree.

The stage and sound booth. I was so excited that one of the summer interns is back for another term - she plays mandolin during worship, which is a fabulous addition to the guitar, violin, and voices.

The worship area. Here you can see that the main building is a converted warehouse, into which an industrial-style kitchen, office, and restrooms have been added. The space behind the chairs in this photo is the dining area, and behind the wall is the kitchen. The wood and glass door at the side leads into the offices.

Side porch and rockers. Out in this yard are 7 volunteer bunkhouses (heated, air-conditioned, and electrified, with bunk beds. Restrooms and hot showers are in the main building). There are also a staff and intern bunkhouse, several trailers, and a huge tool crib.

A volunteer team posting their sign before taking off.
To quote again from the Lagniappe info piece,

Lagniappe staff members help to facilitate the relief work in the Bay-Waveland area by coordinating team trips, planning work projects, securing permits, evaluating
work requests and engaging in pastoral ministry with the community. Staff members are financially supported by individuals and churches through monthly donations and prayers. Lagniappe regularly seeks volunteers who can use their gifts on a short-term or long-term basis. When people ask, 'What do you need?" we often respond, "What can you do?" or "What resources do you have access to?" Individuals are uniquely gifted and called at certain times or seasons of life for service in the Kingdom. We have found that those gifts providentially correspond with our needs during specific seasons of this ministry. Teams should not consider only construction type trips. Individuals are needed to work with residents through our social work and pastoral staff to help provide visitation, prayer and crisis support. We regularly need teams to assist with our foodservice and facility needs as well. We are presently seeking such teams in addition to our 'normal' work crews.

Lagniappe can house up to 350 people at peak capacity. The longer-term community here includes local residents who are members of the small congregation, long-term and repeat volunteers, Lagniappe staff in the construction, office, support, pastoral, and case-management areas, Habitat for Humanity staff and Americorps volunteers assigned either to Lagniappe or Habitat, plus a handful of other young adult types who have been drawn in by incidental exposure to Lagniappe's construction work and the incredibly gospel-focused preaching and Bible studies.

Gingerbread & Team Signs

2008-12-15T09:35:00.004-06:00

The creativity of some of these folks is amazing. Yesterday we had a gingerbread house-making party at the boys' house. Featured prize-winning creations included:

* Calvin & Hobbes-themed snowman cabin

* Traditional wintry home complete with blazing hearth

* Katrina-ravaged house on stilts

* Lagniappe church facility in a winter dream...complete with Dumpster, tool crib, and construction truck with roof rack. Sorry, I couldn't get good pics of that part, but here's the front:

Here are some photos of incredibly detailed and funny team signs posted around the Lagniappe facility. I haven't been to a Lagniappe orientation yet (staff take turns) but apparently it includes a warning: good team signs will be retained on the walls, sorry ones will be relegated to the large green file outside...the one with lids, that's emptied once a week. I'd say the teams take this warning seriously.

The walls are covered!

"We worked our boots off!"

"Semper Gumby"

"You fix houses - we'll fix dinner!" from a team of ladies who came to work in the kitchen during one of the big summer weeks.

Wintry notes

2008-12-12T08:01:00.002-06:00

It's already started: the slow stream of folks leaving for their Christmas holiday. It's a little odd to be living again in a community of people who are almost all from somewhere else - like being in college again, where you have to think when somebody talks of going home: are they thinking home to their present address or home to their roots? Anyway, Annette leaves at the end of the day today, and the number of people taking off will grow to a flood by next week.

It finally does feel like winter here. We had snow flurries yesterday! We tried to get photos, but the snow was too ephemeral to show up on camera. A few of us from the frozen North were laughing at the weather forecaster in the morning. She said something about Arctic air masses while pointing at a screen full of temperatures in the 30s. We said, "Sister, it's not Arctic until the temperature is below 20!" Nonetheless, it was cold when we were standing around on a jobsite in the cold rain that continued long after the last few slushy flakes melted on the palm trees.

Today I get to wonder if there are spiritual lessons to be learned by hunting around behind the ice machine to discover the source of the stench - I think maybe some small furry or scaly creature crawled in there and died. Or maybe I need to be more diligent about mopping under the rubber mats. If there are "sermons in stones and good in everything" (is that Shakespeare?) then there must be something worth thinking about regarding stinky corners.

The construction staff are bracing themselves for next week's blitz build. There may even be some carbohydrate-loading this weekend. Should be a wild, fast-paced week. Pray for favorable weather and safety for all our volunteers!

concrete

2008-12-04T08:03:00.003-06:00

I had to ask someone yesterday, "What's the difference between cement and concrete?" I had the honor of spending most of the day with a team from GA, working at one of the job sites. In 2 more weeks, a batch of college students will arrive to do a blitz build, and this home will be one of the 2 houses they aim to complete. Right now it doesn't look like much: a muddy lot next to a MEMA cottage with a skinny spotted dog tied up beside the ramp up to the front porch. In the mud, there are a regular forest of foundation posts in huge holes, all tied together with bracing and fluorescent string gridlines.

We had 4 truckloads of concrete delivered yesterday, and 7 of us dumped it into the holes, one wheelbarrow-full at a time. I think even Jeremy and Andrew, who work as construction supervisors for Lagniappe full time, were tired out by all the hauling. But that's probably a good thing, since whenever they work together, practical jokes abound. A couple of weeks ago, Jeremy squirted Liquid Nails onto the laces of Andrew's work shoes while they were constructing a deck. Yesterday, all we got was a little indiscriminate spraying with the garden hose.

It's good to get out and work although, I confess, I'm sore today. I hadn't done that much heavy labor since the hurricane evacuation and return. I think all of us ought to go out to a job site at least a couple days a month.

Brillig

2008-11-28T12:28:00.002-06:00

Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimbol in the wabe.
Or something like that. I can't use the word brilliant without thinking about the Jabberwock, but here's a link to an NPR story about something that really is brilliant. Or brillig.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97360726
Anyway, I think it's the kind of thing that makes Jesus smile, and the kind of thing that probably makes the Enemy stamp his little cloven hoofs in frustration.
Speaking of which, did I tell you about one of my favorite volunteers at PDA? (OK, I admit, I have favorites) A little lady named Gerry, about as tall as my mom and at least 65 if she's a day. She out-worked the rest of the team that week. I swear, she never stopped! She helped me scrub the kitchen, among other things, with no hesitation to clamber up on the stepladder and wipe grease spatters off the ceiling.
So her team was pretty crazy, and they all brought gag gifts for one another. The mayor had a fabulous spangled ladies' top. One of the men, eye-burningly bright MC Hammer pants. Gerry's gift was absolutely perfect: an apron that reads, "When my feet hit the floor, the Devil says, 'Oh, S***!' " Let's make that true for every Christian!

Thanks-Giving

2008-11-27T08:00:00.001-06:00

Prayers of thanks at Lagniappe on Sunday:
Thank God for - the sweet Spirit at Lagniappe
Thank God for - a country where the handover of power from one administration to the next happens peacefully
Thank God for - the hurricanes that brought us together
Thank God for - consistently sending volunteers to accomplish the needed work
Thank God for - strategically positioning Lagniappe within the community to meet needs - and
changing that position over time
Thank God for - the gift of His son, Jesus
Thank God for - a ridiculously talented staff
Thank God for - not having enough money to build my house myself, so I got to meet all these
great people
Thank God for - our families

Smart, Dead People

2008-11-25T14:54:00.002-06:00

My friend Shaun has been sending around quotations from smart, dead people for quite a while now. One of his entries from election season:
"The punishment of wise men who refuse to take part in the government is to live under the government of worse men." Plato, The Republic. Plato’s version is much more eloquent than the American version; “Don’t vote? Don’t complain.”
In that spirit, let me offer a selection from Martin Luther King, Jr. from his collection of 5 radio addresses, The Trumpet of Conscience. This is from "Conscience and the Vietnam War."

Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I had several reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor, so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demoniacal destructive suction tube. And so I was increasingly compelled to see the war not only as a moral outrage but also as an enemy of the poor, and to attack it as such.
Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear
to me that the war was doing far more then devastating the hopes of the poor at
home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to
fight and to die and in extraordinarily higher proportions relative to the rest
of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been
crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee
liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and
East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of
watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a
nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. We watch them in brutal solidarity burning the hits of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

Has anything changed? This reading struck my heart for several reasons: first, the experience of war is wretched for both soldiers and civilians, a form of suffering that surely cannot be understood until it is known first-hand. It's hard to understand why we as a race and as a nation keep turning to it before exhausting every other possible solution, when we know that it's so awful, and we can surely tell from even a cursory glance at history that it doesn't solve problems. Violence begets violence.

Second, and I don't have the statistics at hand but I'm sure someone does (and Michael Moore would be happy to inform you), it is still the lower classes and minority races who overwhelmingly represent us in the armed forces. Many enlist only because they see no other financial alternative, or no other way to obtain the education they long for. It's their ticket into the world of the educated, the privileged. What happened to the old American dream of equal opportunities and universal free education? Why are some people still more equal than others, despite all the hard work done for us by Dr. King and his companions?

Third, I see very clearly that our government is incapable of prioritizing spending properly. If all the dollars funneled into unjust warfare were available for public works, or turned into a living wage for all workers, or into research to free us from fossil fuels, what changes would we see? If the USA participated in the Kyoto protocols and led the efforts to curb global warming, if we threw our energy into developing clean, green technologies for homes and businesses, if we released our death-grip on the car and SUV way of transportation and actually built useful public transit, if we restarted the Civilian Conservation Corps to keep people off the unemployment rolls, if we created a health care system that actually cared for people's health, if we made the same resources available for poor urban and rural schools that the rich, exclusive schools have - what then?

You might argue, "It's not the government's job to look after the poor." Well, what if it isn't? Whose job is it? Check your Bible - it clearly shows that this is the Church's job. So don't complain about your taxes going to lamprey-like bums who live off the welfare system, not unless you're willing to serve a couple more meals at the soup kitchen, be a Big Brother or Big Sister, plant a community garden, invite a homeless lady to live in your spare room, teach a class for free, babysit for the single mom while she works, get a smaller house or car and give the money you save to the poor, walk into that bad neighborhood on the wrong side of town and get to know people and find out what their needs really are. It's like I used to tell my students who said they were cold but wouldn't zip their jackets or wear a hat: you don't have a right to complain unless you're willing to take action to solve the problem.

Lest I come off sounding self-righteous - let's just say that I am as serious a repeat offender as anybody. The number of people I know who are really poor, I can count on one hand. I'm afraid to get involved in those tough ministries, just like you are. I'm afraid to ask people about their problems because I honestly don't want to get involved. It might crimp my independent lifestyle. Let's pray for courage and vision, and be ready to put feet and hands on the Gospel when God shows up with all his friends. Because they're a motley bunch of sinners, tax collectors, rebellious teenagers, hyperactive kids, homeless bums and deadbeat dads, recovering addicts and prostitutes, orphans and widows and illegal immigrants - and they desperately need us to act like Jesus, to be the Church.

Prophets

2008-11-19T11:50:00.003-06:00

I think there was a prophet in our midst today. Or an angel, or as my friend Jane Els puts it,
"I am convinced that sometimes Jesus dresses up like a homeless person and goes around to his churches to check on how we’re doing. So I always try to pay attention to any homeless person I’m around. I try to be attentive but not a suck-up. I’m sure Jesus can spot a suck-up pretty quick." (see her blog at http://janeels.blogspot.com/)

By way of background, Lagniappe church has a consistent flow of people who come for what they call 'benevolence.' The church helps out with rent and utility payments, baby items, and a host of other needs as people come and ask. The deacons meet twice a week to look over the situations and determine what is the best way to help. In return, most of the recipients do volunteer work around the church in a sort of equity system. They also agree to participate in a personal finance class and sometimes some other things to help them avoid needing to return for help again and again.

So today a gentleman came in to perform some service hours. I'll call him Mr. Nathan since I think he was fulfilling a prophetic assignment. We got him started on a task, but then he started feeling poorly and took a break. Thankfully he was not up on the storage platform above the kitchen when he passed out! He was lightheaded, pale, sweating, and breathing hard when I saw him a few minutes later. Eventually he told us he hadn't eaten in a couple of days, so immediately we found him some leftovers from breakfast and a banana. When he didn't perk up after eating and resting a bit, we wound up calling 911. I kept thinking of those old Red Cross training videos on heart attack symptoms, and although he didn't complain of chest pain, he looked like a perfect candidate in most other ways.

Mr. Nathan declined to go along with the EMTs to the hospital. Eventually some of the men here took him home. But the strange conjunction of circumstances - a man working for the church on an empty stomach - made me think pretty hard.

As I wrote before, I have been reading Shane Claiborne's Jesus for President. It has a lot to say about how the church interacts with the political system, and with the poor. God forgive us, we in the church have too often left the job of caring for the poor to the government. But God says to Israel, "There should be no poor among you," and He gives specific instructions to care for the poor, widows, orphans, the friendless, the stranger and the outcast. The early church shared everything in common; the wealthy gave up their belongings so the poorer brothers had enough. I think it's Mother Teresa who said, "if any of you has two coats, one of them belongs to the poor." Some have even said that if we have more than enough, while someone else is going without, we are stealing - maybe even guilty of murder.

So why don't we do more for the poor? We are too insulated, too separated. We never even see the sweatshop laborer who works for a pittance so we can buy cheap goods in a big-box store. We never meet the migrant harvesters who ensure that we can have fresh produce in February. We demonize the inhabitants of the oil-producing countries so that we don't feel guilty when we bomb them back to the stone age. Our economic system is broken (witness the chaos in the financial markets) and part of the problem is that when we connected to the whole globe, we broke the ties that are supposed to keep us humane. We need the Lord to send us prophets, those wild-eyed fanatics who shout out God's word with love.

So how should a Christian respond? Now that I've had a wake-up call from Brother Shane and Mr. Nathan and my neighbors in Mississippi, what concrete action can I take to act like a citizen of God's kingdom? I gulp and pray that God will show me His way. I have a feeling it will be complex and terrifying, but rich and beautiful and redemptive. One of my professors at Houghton College taught on G. K. Chesterson's The Man who was Thursday, and he always said life with God is like the fire-engine ride at the climax of the book. The Lord leads us on a wild, merry, laughing, crying, compassionate, blazing chase through the world. We never know what's next, but we can be sure it will not be boring!

Odds & Ends

2008-11-14T14:27:00.003-06:00

Just had to note, Jane Els' blog is consistently hilarious (as well as insightful). A sampling: "Not many people keep their cordless drill chargers in their kitchen." Check out her interesting conjunction of items in the PDA village office from 10/27.

I'm minding the front desk at the church this afternoon - the usual gal is out. For a while the phone was busy, but now I find myself with a little free time so I was looking at some things online. For additional information about Lagniappe, visit http://www.pca-mna.org/churchplanting/PDFs/ChurchPlanterProjectProfiles/BayStLouisLALarroux.pdf

Yesterday I visited the Bay St Louis library. Like most other things in town, it's under construction, so for now they're working out of a trailer. The librarian I talked to was so sweet; she ran in to the main building to fetch the book I was looking for. (Naturally, not all the materials will fit in the trailer.) Typical Southern hospitality. And now I feel part of the community: a proud holder of a local library card.

Coming soon: challenging thoughts from author Shane Claiborne, and photos of Lagniappe.

Trouble with the Westminster Confession

2008-11-12T11:46:00.002-06:00

A few months ago, I think I was raving about the Westminster Catechism. When I came to MS in the spring, I promised myself that I was going to read only serious, important books. I did that for a while, and it was good, but there comes a point when you just have to read some fluff. So I read some useless but entertaining novels, got my fix of the printed equivalent of junk food, and now am back to important books. I wanted to read Irresistible Revolution, by Shane Claiborne, but someone gave me a copy of his second book, Jesus For President, so I'm reading that instead. It's fabulous. For one, it's a beautiful book. It's also a challenging and scandalous book. I think Jesus would like it. Whether He agrees with everything written in there, I don't know, but I am convinced that our Lord loves it when we think hard about our faith and our relationship to this fallen, messed-up world.

I also picked up a copy of the Westminster Confession of Faith from the church library, partly because I know I have some differences with the doctrine and practice of various Christian denominations. Ultimately, we all share the really important stuff: the contents of the Apostle's Creed. I can happily and fruitfully work and worship with anyone who shares that. But I have loads of questions and concerns about things that are more peripheral but still important: women in ministry, the perseverance of the saints, free will and predestination. So it seemed like a good time to check on what the Reformed faith really says. And I have run up against some things that are hard to swallow. Time to go back to the Bible, the authority (not the culture, which has taught me so much that contradicts God's word), and see where all this stuff comes from. How is it that we get to adulthood, living within the church family, and don't know this stuff?

Respite

2008-11-12T11:27:00.003-06:00

I've been with LAgniappe 3 days now and I have to say, in comparison with PDA this is a vacation. At this time, I am functioning as the "Camp Care Leader," aka housekeeper for the church and volunteer site. Later on, when some staff transitions occur here, I will take on some other responsibilities and most of the housekeeping will pass to a part-time person. But for now, it's a wonderful change to reach the end of the to-do list. I have a definite set of tasks each day and they are actually possible to accomplish in one day! This role is not really full-time; Lagniappe is gracious enough to allow this to stand for a while so I can get some rest.

PDA was wonderful and I love all the great volunteers and staff I worked with there. That said, the agency has a real problem: the roles of the long-term volunteers are so intense that they're only sustainable for a few months. But it takes about 3 months just to figure out how everything works, and PDA desperately needs people who have knowledge and experience. The homeowners need people with continuity and connections to the local community. I don't know any way to solve the problem. The difference here at Lagniappe is that it's all concentrated in one place, so the staff can share and take turns with the various responsibilities. With PDA being spread over 5 locations, everyone has to be 'on' all the time.

The other wonderful thing about Lagniappe is being part of the community. Staff and congregation members get together frequently. They intentionally support the local businesses, choosing to spend a little more at the Mockingbird instead of feeding the machine at a chain fast-food joint. It's fantastic to get done with the work day and get a message from another worker, "Pizza at my place, 6:45. Bring a salad."

Thank you, Lord, for rest and fellowship.

New Place

2008-11-10T08:11:00.002-06:00

It’s been a while since I posted. The past 2 weeks have been full; we had a big group from the Detroit Presbytery at the Pearlington PDA village. They were here over both weeks, with some folks staying for both and some swapping out. The first week, we also had teams from PA and MD. I’ve filled the bed of the pickup with groceries every other day! The Detroit crew brought several organizers, so our workload has been lighter, but it’s still been busy!

This morning I cleaned out the RV and loaded up the car to move to my new place. It’s in Waveland, which sort of merges into Bay St Louis a few blocks to the east of here. I’m now writing from the cutest, tiniest one-room cottage you can imagine. Jessi and Mike came with me Sunday when I signed the lease. As we pulled up to the place, Mike said, “Oh, it’s not that small!” Then I pointed out that I’m living in the little outbuilding in the back, not the house that fronts on the street. I’m all moved in, but Luthien is not settled yet. She was brave at first, inspecting the cupboards, but then she got anxious and hid behind the shower curtain where it wraps around the wall. I’m hoping some catnip will help her feel more at home! It’s been awesome working with the PDA volunteers, but I am excited to start at Lagniappe on Monday and see what the Lord has to show me there.

Walk This Way

2008-10-26T17:23:00.002-05:00

I have sometimes joked that I wish God would post a big neon sign for me, to communicate His will. I don't think He uses neon much, but this might be as close as He gets. In the past week, an opportunity has arisen that I was not expecting, but I don't think God could be any clearer in saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

For much of my time with PDA in Mississippi, I have been considering and praying about what God may have for me next. Some possibilities have suggested themselves, including a return to Christian camp ministry, a change to library work, or even (gulp) maybe church ministry.

Lagniappe Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Bay Saint Louis, MS has offered me a position on their staff. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know it's a place that has captured my attention. They are a recent start-up congregation (post-Katrina) that also hosts volunteer construction teams. Their operation is similar to PDA in some ways, but more concentrated in one place rather than spread across the Gulf Coast. Their capacity is over 200 volunteers per week, and they work extensively with AmeriCorps to keep the operation running, since the congregation consists of only about 40 people.

I have been attending worship and Bible study there for several months and have really admired their community presence, their honesty about sin and their focus on God's simple, profound Gospel, and the quality of the people there. The role would involve many of the things I already do here with PDA, but since I will work a more normal schedule there and some new experiences in different areas may occur, I am really hoping to devote some time to discernment of whether to pursue church ministry.

It's even a relatively good transition time for PDA in Pearlington, since there are 2 others here now (both currently worksite assignment managers, but one had hoped to be a village manager), and our last big group for the fall will depart at the end of my two-week notice period.

The only big question at this point will be housing - I'll need to find a place in Bay St Louis that will accept my cat and not cost a fortune. If you want to pray for me, pray for a congenial roommate and a great, nearby, inexpensive, clean apartment. And of course for all the usual: smooth transitions, safety for volunteers, restoration for local residents.

Celebration

2008-10-23T06:55:00.002-05:00

Praise God, we got back into Pearlington this week! Actually, two men from the Philadelphia crew got in Friday night while I was still farewelling the last crew over in Gulfport. The RVs got hooked up Saturday morning and the rest of the Philly bunch came Saturday afternoon and Sunday.

We've been working out a few bugs (like a dead rat in the motor of the dryer, finding kerosene for the heaters, and unclogging a water line) but in general the village is up and running again. Without the commute back and forth, we have lots more time each day to work. Plus, the close connection between PDA volunteers and Pearlington residents feels more intact. We are so thankful!

The Politics of Food
It's popular now to be conscious about your food choices. People choose organic, or local, or low-carb, or low-fat. Companies advertise the wonder nutrients of just about everything (last week I bought us some frozen fruit bars that are labeled as Super Charged By Nature!) except for actual fruits and vegetables. But this week is the first time I've seen anything in the major media about food and politics. Michael Pollan, author of a couple books I need to read, offers all his food advice summed up in three simple phrases:
Eat food - not the fake stuff that's sold as food but that your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize.
Not too much - practice the Japanese habit of stopping when you're 80% full.
Mostly vegetables - We already know all the good stuff is found in them, and that too much of those animal fats will give us heart disease and cancer.

The article, however, deals with how food intersects with politics. It impacts health care, energy and climate change, and foreign policy - all things that our next elected officials will need to deal with. Check it out at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin Then consider what God has to say on the subject of food, responsibility for the planet, peace, and caring for the poor. Think about how we as Christians ought to relate to food. Try some new recipes (look some up online) or some new food sources (visit a local farm or orchard).

Herding Cats

2008-10-13T20:31:00.002-05:00

This job could really make you hate Mondays.
It's always a challenge to get everyone organized on Monday morning. But if I have to do it in combination with a 40-minute commute again, I'm going to take an extended vacation to the Australian outback. And I won't come back until the Pearlington village is habitable.

Seriously, I do think we'll be back in Pearlington next week, and it's a good thing. The commute is getting old, and as many of you know, rounding up a volunteer team (or 5 of them) is like herding cats. Check the video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

We have 30-odd volunteers working in Pearlington this week on 7 different sites, in every stage of completion. We're emptying and then gutting a house that has stood untouched since Katrina. We're tiling a bathroom. We're putting up siding and gutters on two different places. We're sending ladies over to the Baptist church to cook lunch. We're still waiting on the electrician to re-do the foolish things he did last week. Some days it feels like an old-time variety show, complete with a New York City dancer, TV-land jingles, and lessons from a massage therapist.

Job
How do you help a resident who has such bad luck you can almost see the little black cloud hovering over his head? How do you go on with life when you've been struck by lightning twice, had a pacemaker implanted, suffered both a bum knee and a bad back, had your home destroyed by a monster hurricane, been denied for government aid when it appeared that all your neighbors got help, gotten stuck with bills when a family member lost a job, and then got ripped off by an unscrupulous building contractor? Such a man might start to think God has a grudge against him. Or that God is letting the enemy have a field day, just to prove a point.

In the discussion about Ruth last week, I started thinking of how much Naomi and Job have in common - a comparison I never noticed before, maybe because in my Christian college circle, we were too stuck on the romance of Ruth and Boaz. But here in Mississippi, the story of Naomi seems more important. Did you ever think how that woman suffered? Read the story again (it's short) and try to imagine losing your whole family in a foreign country, a country where the customs and religion, and I assume even the language are strange, a country to which you fled to escape a terrible famine at home. Naomi must have felt the loss, too, of her most fruitful years, since I imagine Naomi and Elimelech took their young sons to Moab, watched them grow and marry, then saw them wither and die just as Naomi was ready to become a grandma.

And were those marriages themselves an affront to Naomi's religious sensibilities? She was an observant woman who knew the customs of her people. (She specifically mentions the concept of a kinsman redeemer and the obligation of a man to marry his brother's widow and get sons to carry on the brother's line.) But her boys married foreigners, which was specifically forbidden to the Hebrews.

Then, like Job, Naomi found restoration before the end of the story. Ruth and Boaz didn't just have children to carry on the family tree, they were included in the lineage of Jesus! So when Naomi looked back on her life, what did she see? Did she remember all that suffering, or did she see how God shaped her life and come to view it all as a blessing?

All the people who are now suffering the compounded effects of hurricanes - who are wrestling with jobs, transportation, health, finance, construction, mental health, and relationships that all seem tied up in the storms - what will they see when they look back over these years?

Not to keep coming back to Lagniappe church...but they are doing some things just right. On their shirts and group photos, the tag line reads, "participating in the restoration." Lord, may all our efforts on the Gulf Coast be part of your restoration for the people we meet! For now I feel close enough to the struggle that I'm leaning on His arms and not on my own feeble efforts (see how long it takes before I either get puffed up about how pious I am, or get back to thinking I can run my own life without Him!) I sure can't bring about restoration for any of the people of Pearlington. But He can. And maybe we can be tools in the craftsman's hands. Maybe we can be participants in turning suffering into the raw material that forms and flavors a precious, redeemed soul.

Setbacks and Starters

2008-10-12T07:14:00.002-05:00

Setbacks
It's been a week of ups and downs for Pearlington village. Early this week, I found out about some serious setbacks. First, the electrician laid the conduits in between the pods. Fine. But he also placed the electrical outlets flat down on the concrete slab. Hellooo? This is a location that floods at the drop of a hat! And this is a local worker who should know such things. "Mr. Sparky, would you please re-wire this camp that just flooded knee deep because of a hurricane over 250 miles away?" I was a little peeved. The work has to be re-done before the ductwork can go in.

Second, we discovered a serious issue with our permits for the site. I guess someone in HQ at Louisville pulled some strings and got that taken care of, but at first we thought we had to wait for the next meeting of the group that approves such things, which is not until the 16th.

The upshot of all this is that on Wednesday, I called all 5 groups arriving this weekend to let them know we will be commuting from Gulfport again. This week, we will concentrate on getting the utilities finalized in the village, covering up or otherwise minimizing all the tripping hazards (new conduits across walkways, trenches, and other ankle-biters), and restocking all the consumable supplies.

Starters
Romans 8:26b-27 reads: the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

This week I received an answer to a prayer I didn't even know I was praying. Ever since Jeremy took his new job (which, by the by, he is delighted with, and seems so much more relaxed every time I see him), I have been hoping for a great new co-worker. God sent two! At the end of this week, Jessi and Mike arrived to start as worksite assignment managers in Pearlington. I think we'll all get along great, and it sure will be nice to have the extra help as we move into the busiest weeks of the fall. They've already been out with Henry making visits to the homes we'll be working in this week.

Domestic Affairs
In other news, my cat has decided that she wants to spend more time communing with nature. Translation: every time I open the door, she makes a bid to go outside. I keep telling her there are big dogs and scary men out there, but I've relented and put her out on her kitty harness a couple of times.

We went into Bay St. Louis last night for Second Saturday festivities. Nash Street was playing their bluegrass tunes at the Mockingbrd Cafe again - what a treat! The 4 volunteers from NYC kept saying, "We feel like we're in a movie!" They couldn't get over the locals and tourists mingling in the middle of the streets, the dogs wandering freely between the pizza eaters, the antique shops and local artisans with their wares on the sidewalk, and the sea air drifiting in from the Gulf. BSL is a cool town!

Buddy and Julia, the long term vounteers here at Orange Grove, can't get over the quantity of bananas and coffee required to keep the teams going. It will only increase this week, as we have almost 80 people working out of this camp.

Lagniappe church has started a new women's Bible study on the book of Ruth. As much as I love the Monday night group, it's hard to get there when it's the first night for our volunteer teams, so I'm probably going to make the switch. At the first meeting, we discussed providence, redemption, Naomi as the real main character of the book, and suffering. More on that later!

Time to go put out the toast and cereal. I'm dragging the volunteers with me to Lagniappe this morning (despite their preference for services with a printed bulletin and a formal liturgy) then heading to Pearlington to check out the possibilities - did I mention we have a landscape architect with us?

Holes

2008-10-05T18:09:00.002-05:00

I just discovered the writing of Anne Lamott. This morning, I turned down an invitation to be sociable after church. We don't have a worksite manager in Pearlington just now, and after a week of doing large parts of that job as well as my own, I was ready to be alone for a while and get some rest. I sat down with this book and my cat, read for a little bit, and then slid right into a restorative nap.

Anyway, I seem to have picked up in the middle of Lamott's writing. I have a copy of Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, which is a collection of essays evidently composed in the days surrounding the push to war in Iraq. Turns out Lamott is Presbyterian like me, with a batch of other influences thrown in. She's funny, insightful, and brutally honest about the places where we're broken. It's kinda refreshing to read a Christian writer who's so honest about sin and grace. Plus, we agree on politics, helping people who need it, and opposing senseless, greedy wars (and if that doesn't give you an indication of my politics, I'm not trying hard enough!)

Here's a sample of her wisdom:

Holiness has been most often revealed to me in the exquisite pun of the first syllable, in holes - in not enough help, in brokenness, mess. High holy places, with ethereal sounds and stained glass, can massage my image of holiness, but in holes and lostness I can pick up the light of small ordinary progress, newly made moments flecked like pepper into the slog and the disruptions.

It's like Christi said the other night: in devastation you see humanity. When things are humming along smoothly we don't appreciate the blessings. We get to thinking we're in control and we can handle life ourselves. When circumstances are wretched, grace abounds because we can only stand in Christ, and the little blessings are so much more apparent by contrast to the brokenness. So why is it that I still pray for good times, for easy times, knowing that I'll more likely grow and witness the Kingdom in the hard times?

New Pearlington Pics

2008-10-05T17:37:00.003-05:00

Here are a few pictures from Pearlington in the past week or so:

Wilf and a Columbia, SC volunteer cutting a new trench across the concrete, which will house teh electrical conduit to the kitchen.

Columbia crew completing the frame of the second Quonset hut. I wish I had pictures of putting the canvas on, but we were all too occupied with hauling the heavy material to take any photos. A 50x20 foot tarp is incredibly difficult to move!

The Lagniappe guys using their big-boy toy to help us retrieve pods...

Columbia volunteers working to secure the bottom edge of our dining tent. We had several competing goals: keep the tent from flapping in and out during storms, keep it easy to take down in case of future hurricane evacuations, and be sure the tent will not be torn by weight or flapping in strong winds.

Measuring for the next piece of subfloor at the Bennetts' house.

This is the Bennetts' girl's room. She's in seventh grade and so excited!

Painting at the Breshears' house.

Seeing the Elephant

2008-10-01T13:54:00.002-05:00

Last night in devotions I got to see Jesus again. I swear He shows up more often when there are volunteer teams around! The team we have now includes a few repeat volunteers and many newbies. One of the young women was telling us how scared she was to come here. "I don't do porta-potties well," she confessed. "I almost called up and said I was sick." But now that she's here, she plans to come back the next time this team travels to Pearlington. She's learning one of the lessons we all learn here, which is that no matter what your skills might be, God has a plan and a purpose for you and the people you're with, and all the talents will come together in a beautiful way.

Our new case management liaison, Christi, spoke some words of real wisdom, too: "In devastation, you see humanity, not consumption. We get wrapped up and trapped in consumption, and then your consumption becomes your devastation." We read in Matthew 6 where Jesus is talking about not worrying about this life, right after he instructs us to store up treasures in heaven. Then we talked for a while about the consumption that's so much a part of us and our way of life, and how experiences in Pearlington can change how you interact with that consumer culture.

The team that's here now has seen the elephant. It's absolutely true that you can't grasp the extent and implications of a disaster until you've been on the ground and looked at it with your own naked eyes, until you've listened to the local residents with your own fragile, compassionate heart. As the team leader told us the other night, God tends to mess with you when you sign up for a missions trip. You won't go home the same. In fact, it's a pretty good bet that you'll become one of those service freaks who are the pillars of the church. You know, the ones who turn up week after week to hammer nails with Habitat for Humanity, who give blood at every opportunity, who wash dishes after church suppers or soup kitchen Thanksgiving meals. The ones who don't necessarily like serving on committees, but are the first to volunteer to visit an elderly shut-in, fill in for the church janitor, or drop off a casserole for the new parents.

In this spirit, I'll offer a reading that my Mom discovered on the Web. It has an eligibility requirement: you may not follow this link unless you've worked or volunteered in a disaster area, war zone, etc. If you haven't seen the elephant, you won't understand. (This is my oh-so-subtle way of saying that if you haven't yet been on a hurricane relief trip or other mission project, now's the time. You can read about the elephant when you get home :)
http://www.dreamschoolinternational.com/pdf/SeeingTheElephant.pdf

Back in the Saddle

2008-09-28T17:44:00.002-05:00

We have a team of 24 from Columbia, SC arriving this evening to inaugurate the fall work season. I'm excited to have teams here again, even though we do have to house them at our Gulfport site for this week until we can get the Pearlington housing put back together. So, just a few updates on things I've been mentioning lately:

Kittens
Sure enough, Mama Cat came back and carried her kittens off to a better hiding place. Whew! We are relieved not to be doing any more bottle feeding or adoptive-pet-owner searching. One of the Lagniappe ladies still has the black kitten from the last batch...I think this arrangement is going to be permanent.

New Job
Jeremy has taken a new job as a construction manager for Lagniappe. I'm disappointed not to be working with him any more, since he's a hard worker, super knowledgeable about construction, and a man of God. But I'm pleased for him - this is a great opportunity to do what he loves, with added benefits of a salary and less paperwork. Their structure is a little different, so Jeremy will be able to stay with one house project from start to finish. When there are volunteers, he'll supervise. When there are not, he'll just work on the house. It's a great fit for him.

Houma
Our village in Houma, LA is still in disarray, requiring all the pods to be rebuilt. However, the local guy who works with us there has moved into an apartment with his family and has gone through the process to receive FEMA funding. Volunteers scheduled for Houma will be staying at the Luling site and working on the village until it is serviceable again, then teams can go back to staying there and working on homes in the area.

Pearlington
One Quonset hut is up and the other is ready to go up. The electrician, plumber, and gas line folks will be out early this week to restore our utilities. Part of our volunteer team this week will work on the village and the rest will work in 2 homes. I should have learned by now that everything takes longer than you expect (it's slow here, remember?) but we are making good progress. More pics later this week.

Days of Awe
So I was in the car this morning on the way to church and heard a story about the Jewish high hily days, running from Rosh Hashanah (tomorrow, I think) to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This is the time of year when the Jewish tradition calls for a focus on repentance and an awareness of the fragility and wonder of life. It's a time to break away from the routine daily or weekly confession and attempts to live a righteous life before God, and to turn to God in specific, introspective repentance. The rabbi who was speaking discussed how, over the course of the Days of Awe, the liturgy and readings progress from a focus on personal sins and our personal relationships with those we love, to the sins of the community and the world, and taking responsibility for it all.

The story made me think of the wonder of the Cross. Without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sin. Without grace, we are incapable of leading a righteous life. Even if you repent every year and siphon your sins out onto a scape-goat, the guilt still exists. It's out there somewhere, wandering around and still potent to hurt you. Only Christ frees us from the guilt and shame, from the fear of evil spirits that is so prevalent in the ancient religions, from the crushing need to be better people than we are capable of being.

Then in church, the text was from Joshua 7. Just after the battle of Jericho, when God instructed the people not to take any of the spoils (but to put them into the treasury devoted to the Lord), one man grabbed up a few choice items for himself. The next battle, the Israelites lost, because of the sin among them. The Lord instructs Joshua to take decisive action to root out this sin. We heard about the life cycle of sin: you see the object of your desire, you begin to covet it (forming an inordinate desire that places that object above God in your affections and attention), you reach out for it and attempt to fill the void in your heart with something less than God. Then you suffer the practical consequences of whatever it is, and you suffer the guilt.

Our culture instructs us not to take sin very seriously, but Scripture instructs us to take it incredibly seriously, because it hurts us. Our culture also instructs us to be self-reliant, and so we turn to every imaginable option, every snake-oil cure, before we break down and ask for God's help. How foolish we are (how foolish I am!) Don't we know, God is a good and generous Father, who knows how to give good gifts to his children? If a child asks their parent for bread or a fish, he doesn't get a snake or a stone. He gets good, nourishing food. How much more, if we ask God for grace, for wisdom, to change our hearts, will he give us what we need!

A good reminder...

Under Construction

2008-09-22T17:36:00.004-05:00

At last, here are some pics of the last few days of reconstruction at the Pearlington PDA village. I stopped by the Orange Grove village yesterday to do laundry (since ours is not yet connected) and picked up my camera cord. Unfortunately, I do not have pics of Moose chasing a large grasshopper, Luthien sitting on the laptop keyboard, or the 4 new kittens we found in the ductwork! More kittens?!? Stop the ride, I want to get off! We hope Mom will come back for them. This is the trench we cut across the concrete to accomodate new electrical lines from the post out to the perimeter of the village. It will help us re-wire the shower trailer and RVs.
Extra pods, folded and stacked.

Why do we have extra pods? Because the City of Waveland is loaning us 2 Quonset huts! We're pretty excited to replace 20 little pods with 2 big huts, and we're already designing the interior: dividers? Curtains? Bunk beds or cots? Perhaps a little reading corner with an armchair? We think they'll be easier to heat and cool than the pods, too. I spent my morning cleaning out the laundry room at the center of the shower trailer. Anybody need some glass cleaner? I've got lots! Now the extra pods are really ready to go - they've been plastic-wrapped so all the door and end pieces stay together as a set. I found out today that some of them came to us from Florida. Maybe from here they'll go further west - either to Houma or perhaps Texas? We're curious what the PDA response will be there, if full-scale villages will be eastablished or if they'll stick to hosting volunteers in churches as in many other places.

More tomorrow!

Provision

2008-09-20T07:43:00.002-05:00

God is good! He provided for us again this week, in lots of ways, but let me tell you about 2:

Wednesday night, God provided sabbath and re-creation. Keri and Beth invited us to join some of the Lagniappe crew for games and snacks in the evening, so we cleaned up from a long day of work and headed in to BSL. It was so refreshing to just hang out with some great folks and play dominoes. What a blessed respite from the frustrations and tiredness of the week!

Thursday, God provided a solution to our housing crunch. I was becoming more and more anxious that we might not have the pods ready for our first week of volunteers, and we are also thinking that they are not the best, sturdiest, or most cost-effective housing option. Then a gentleman from another local agency stopped by and asked if we could use 2 Quonset huts. (Those are the big half-round canvas structures with metal frames.) We said yes! We figure we can house 20 people in each Quonset once we acquire some bunk beds. So we will have 2 huts and 16 pods for a total of 72 beds. This will simplify the electrical and ductwork considerably, plus give us housing that's proven to stand up to tropical storm force winds (several groups use them in Waveland and BSL).

Accomplishment
We've gotten a lot done this week, but there's a long way still to go before we are ready to host volunteer teams and get back to work restoring homes. The big tent is back up, which is important; people here in town know that means we're here to stay until the work is done. All the broken and surplus pods are out of the way, and mostly broken down for transfer, probably to replace the flattened ones in Houma. We have trenches dug to accommodate new water and gas lines and the new electrical conduits. The guys spent hours with the ditch witch and jackhammer to get that done!

My office and kitchen are looking recognizable again, with all the extra supplies moved back into the tent. They're not quite up to standard yet, but I'll get there in a couple more days. All our service providers (portajohns, dumpster, and ice) are back on their regular schedules. Jeremy's RV is here. We'll bring mine along as soon as we're done moving things around in the back. For now, I am camping out in the office in order to avoid the drive back and forth to Gulfport.

Sorry I don't have more pictures for you yet. My camera cord is in the RV...in Gulfport.

Dogsitting
Jeremy headed north for his birthday weekend, so I'm dog sitting. Moose is a doll, but she does require a lot of attention. Her latest game is Keep Away: she holds the tennis ball in her teeth and butts her head into your leg. This means, "Please steal the ball from me in a clever way and throw it so I can chase it," but somehow it feels like the dog is more in control than in a standard game of Fetch.

Luthien's 2 favorite games remain the same: Pet Me, and Pretend to Nap on the Top Shelf While Actually Glaring at the Dog. She does not enjoy camping in the office, largely because there is a steady procession of intruders, both canine and human.

Shelving
Time to go - I want to hit the farmer's market in Slidell and then pick up new shelving units for the tent. Today will be a light day (much needed after so many straight days of physical labor) but the task list is looming!

Rubble Rousers

2008-09-15T15:47:00.003-05:00

There were some serious puns flying around the Pearlington village this morning. I think it started when someone asked me where I wanted the extra pieces of pod material, and we decided that on top of the closest pile of rubble was equally as acceptable as the further ones. Before long, we had decided we were the rubble rousing crew. Then Chris declared he was a reformed rubble. Now he's a rubble with a cause.

Ike
Hurricane Ike delivered storm surge and wind to our part of the Gulf Coast on its way to Texas. We don't have a good way to judge how much water we had at the village as compared to during Gustav, but the kitchen did not get wet a second time, so it can't have been much. However, it did float all the pods back into the woods. Jeremy was pretty heartbroken that all his effort on that score was wasted.

In the area, Ike certainly flooded low spots in the roads, but again - we did not get the severe winds that we dreaded. Power and phone lines and water systems all seem to be fine - at least from New Orleans eastward. We read in the paper that the parishes south and west of New Orleans do not have potable water and won't until the government dredges the large bayou in the area. Hurricane Ike stirred up so much sediment in the water there that the bacteria are having a field day. So we were concerned about the folks staying in the PDA village at Houma.

Manky Mucky Dank Rankness
Most of us spent the day in Pearlington working on 3 major jobs (a few pics to come later):

1. Pull the pods back out of the swamp and onto the concrete. Jeremy and Henry accomplished most of this with the truck and a borrowed 4-wheeler.

2. Power wash the dining tent. The roof pieces were stored near the floor level in the tool containers, so they were pretty rank with floodwater and starting to grow interesting colonies. That's ok, though, the tent needed washing anyway!

3. Haul out the remaining contents of the tool containers and remove water-damaged items. We now have fans set up in both sea containers to air them out. Can't say the rest of the stuff is any drier than when we started, since we got a sudden rainshower while it was all outside. But at least the rain will have washed some of the funk off.

Tomorrow I think we are all heading back to get the tent up, dig the trench for new electrical lines to the pods, and find a way to anchor the tent platform so it can't float away next time we have a storm.

We're all sore and tired; we spent the end of last week at Orange Grove, tidying and generally making sure it's ready for volunteer teams. Saturday we went to Luling to clean up there. The FISH camp site looks good, aside from 2 or 3 smushed pods and a lot of tree branches down. We got all the branches and leaves to the street, with the help of Leslie's son and several of his friends. On Sunday, Jeremy and I went to Lagniappe for church, then to Pearlington to start the clean-out process in the tool containers.

But Dad, I'm workin'!
Sunday was so encouraging! Jeremy and I both woke up tired, and for a little while we thought we were on our own at the village. The thought of hauling all the ductwork, cots, mats, loose wire, and other items out of the tool containers was daunting, yet we didn't want things to sit in the damp any longer, growing mold. Then the Bennetts came over and pitched in, including their 5-year-old. What a sweetie! He can barely manage a cot or folding chair, but he hauled out his fair share. Several times as we were unstacking things, his dad asked him to scoot out of the way, and he piped up, "But Dad, I'm workin'!" I was also tickled to hear him say 'Yes, sir' and 'Yes, ma'am' to his parents and Jeremy (who he calls Uncle Jeremy) - you don't get that from kids up North!

Two of our friends from Lagniappe joined us to help as well. Between 6 adults, one kindergartner and a dog, we got all the tables, cots, mats, ducts, flexible ducts, heaters and air conditioners out. We aired the cots and mats and stashed them in a pod. We discovered that the heat wagons are not watertight; the tanks are full of floodwater, and we assume that any kerosene I didn't manage to siphon out in the spring is floating at the top of the tanks. Taking care of that and testing the air conditioners will be a job for another day. For now, I'm grateful to have so much work done in such good company!

Volunteer Teams
We are scheduled to have our first volunteer team of the fall on Sept. 28. I think we can have housing ready by then. If not, there is a backup plan, but I'd rather have our pods all together. I spent some time last week phoning the team leaders for the next several weeks, and have had lots of emails from other team leaders and volunteers. We sure thank you for all your prayers! Keep 'em coming!

News Flash

2008-09-11T21:29:00.002-05:00

Here's a link that John (the village manager right before me) sent to an article about Pearlington. http://features.csmonitor.com/backstory/2008/09/08/how-one-mississippi-town-rebuilds-hurricane-after-hurricane/ It's a great article! just ignore the sarcastic/complainey comments by readers at the bottom. Who ever thought that was a good idea? Bad enough when we used to read the newspaper on paper and suffer the slings and arrows of letters to the editor. (I say as I complain about someone else's idea of important freedom of expression)

Barbara Kingsolver: my latest favorite author
Not at all to be confused with my least favorite author. Barbara Kingsolver is of a like mind with Wendell Berry, if you've ever read anything of his. I just finished devouring Small Wonder, her book of essays, and it is so appropriate now while I am remembering 9/11 and watching the presidential race. Several of the essays contain parts of her response to the attacks of 9/11 and the rush to war afterward. If you haven't yet discovered her, try Animal, Vegetable, Miracle if you've ever wondered about our weird cultural approach to food, Prodigal Summer for a fascinating trio of tales woven into a rich ecological and cultural setting, or Small Wonder for soulful comment upon issues like patriotism, freedom, writing, and more.

Water, water everywhere

2008-09-11T21:01:00.003-05:00

Wow, Ike is a really large storm. This morning we stopped in the office to pick up our new case management liaison, Christi. While we were there, Henry showed us a satellite image of the storm clouds. They filled up 2/3 of the Gulf of Mexico!

As we headed to Pearlington, we already were seeing effects: the water is up several feet where I-1o crosses the Jourdan River, which feeds into the bay at Bay St. Louis. In the PDA village, the swamp which so recently hosted our pods is full, too. Water was almost up to the lowest edge of the concrete, out behind the shower trailer. I cleaned up some things at the village while Jeremy and Christi went out to visit homeowners and confirm work projects for fall. In a couple of hours, they came back. They couldn't get to the rest of the people on their list because roads in the Belle Isle neighborhood were already covered in too much water for the pickup to safely navigate.

On the way back, we stopped in Waveland and saw water already covering the beachfront road. However, we were able to drive back to Gulfport on route 90, despite some earlier rumors that it might be flooded.

If Hancock county already has this much water, with Ike still some 200 miles south, whatever will Texas and western Louisiana experience in another day or two? We have heard that although Ike is a Class II hurricane by windspeed, its size and barometric pressure are more consistent with a III or IV. Please pray for our brothers and sisters in the direct path!

We returned to the Orange Grove village again tonight. Weather permitting, we hope to get some equipment into Pearlington over the weekend and install new wiring for the back half of the village. Maybe by late next week we will be ready to bring the RVs back and settle into our Mississippi home once again. I think Kim, one of the team leaders I worked with in July, is hoping that the one pod will remain out in the swamp (she said something about a honeymoon suite in her last email), but we want all the others lined back up in orderly rows with ductwork and electrical service by Sept. 28!

Misconception
As we were talking to Christi in the truck today, I discovered a common misconception that I'd just like to clear up, in case any of you readers caught the contamination: Jeremy and I are not dating. Just because we work together all the time, attend church together (a sure sign on a Christian college campus), and wear the same clothes (hello, limited wardrobe choices: the collared blue PDA polo, or the informal blue PDA tee?), does not make us a couple. Sorry, matchmakers! Thing is, he's happily entangled in a long-distance relationship with a young lady back home. I am waiting for Prince Charming to sweep me off my feet or King Jesus to come back, whichever comes first. As my friends used to say at Houghton, "All the good ones are either married or Mormon."

Happy Cats

2008-09-09T15:28:00.002-05:00

Some good news today:

One: Ike-lessness
Hurricane Ike is not supposed to head our way. On the other hand, this means someone else is going to get it. Someone I talked to yesterday was saying how he had a hard time with this: he didn't want the hurricane to come to our area, but didn't want to wish it on anyone else. Sunday, Pr. Jean was speaking from Job, who certainly struggled with God and understanding how the will of a good God can include pain and suffering for His obedient people. Sometimes the answer is, "You're not God. How can you pretend to understand?" Can you pull in the leviathan? Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, "Here we are?" Can you add even one day to your own life by worrying or trying hard? A hard word to swallow.

Two: Queen Luthien
Luthien is very pleased with life. She's back in her own space. Her human servant (namely me) stops in now and again and provides food, pats, feathered-toy-tossing service, and brushing on the correct schedule. She can see out the windows. What more could she ask? Well, perhaps a bigger living area with some stairs to run up and down. But overall, life is good for a cat.

Three: hero to a small furball
If you can qualify for sainthood or everyday-hero status by kindness to animals, I have a candidate. A lady at Lagniappe church agreed to take the kitten, at least until Jeremy and I get back to Pearlington. She already has a kitten from the last batch. Just when she though she was done with bottle-feeding, here she goes again! I'm so glad we didn't have to do something awful to that kitty, because we would not be able to take it with us on an extended evacuation.

Speaking of evacuations...MS and LA residents are probably all breathing a sigh of relief. It doesn't look like most of them will have to evacuate again. Ike is supposed to be heading for Texas, so although we are still keeping an eye open, PDA staff are not expecting to have to run north again. There must be so many families who already struggle to make ends meet, who spent the month's electric bill on a hotel room in Baton Rouge where the power went out. I'm sure they were dreading the choice to either weather another storm or try to evacuate again with money they haven't got.

We're still in Gulfport for now, with the other villages shut down and packed up as best we can. Perhaps in another 24 hours we will get the all-clear and be able to head back and start cleaning up the Gustav mess. We have just 21 days before the first fall work team is scheduled to arrive, so it will be a challenge to get the pods, electrical service, and ductwork back together for them.

Please continue to pray for the safety of staff and volunteers, God's peace and protection over coastal dwellers, comfort and restoration for our brothers and sisters recovering from storm damage - whether here in the USA or in the Carribbean islands.

Good Earth Village

2008-09-07T08:01:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was awfully long. We drove over to Houma, to the PDA Good Earth volunteer village there. It received the kind of damage I was expecting to see in Pearlington, and then some. Destruction from Hurricane Gustav is different than I expected, mostly less severe. But to the people whose homes were deeply flooded or torn up by tornadoes (like Kevin's mobile home), it doesn't matter. Their possessions are no less wet, scattered, corroded, or moldy just because the neighbors are fine. Then again, most businesses along our drive seemed to be open. Electric service was a little spotty, but you don't have to travel far to find groceries and gasoline, as you might have after Katrina and Rita.

Good Earth Village has a solid building that's used as the equivalent of our dining tent and kitchen. It is fine, complete with power and the ice machine and functioning bathrooms. The living trailers are ok, too. However, the tent (used for extra storage) and the pods are ruined. Some of the corrugated-plastic pod walls have blown all the way into neighboring properties. We knew the pod structure would not withstand storm winds, but it is still dismaying.

Jeremy and I spent most of the day pulling the cots out of the wreckage and setting them up to dry. Most are salvageable, if a bit wet and leafy. We also saved the poles from the larger pods, the yellow flexible ducts, and even the doormats. However, all that can be done with the pods, fans, power cords, and mattresses is pull them out of the trees and yard, pile them up, and try to get the trash out before Ike arrives. We don't want the debris to become someone else's problem if there's another round of wind and flooding.

We started a burn pile to dispose of the loose branches, then found out there's a fire ban. Whoops!

Thanks, Kim!
My one small success of the day was phoning Kim, the fire chief back here in Pearlington. He thought that the dozen or so fire extinguishers, still attached to their posts around the Houma village, will still be good despite their dousing. He even offered to have them inspected if we brought them back to Pearlington. We decided they might get lost in transit, so left them in Houma, but I did wash off the salt-water film so they won't corrode.

Lagniappe
We got back here just in time to shower and head over to Bay St Louis for a barbeque with some of the Lagniappe folks. It was great to relax with them, enjoy some fellowship and awesome food. It was really such a treat, a little something extra from the Lord. While there, we tried to find a home for the kitten...no luck yet. But we may be able to talk Ben into taking the latest stray dog. I told Jeremy we should consider rescuing fish instead of mammals. Surely it would be easier to handle and pass on a bowl of goldfish than a squirming, squalling furball who requires bottle-feeding every couple of hours!

Pics post Gustav

2008-09-05T21:51:00.004-05:00

Here are a few pics of the PDA village, taken yesterday.

Henry on his cell, standing on our tent platform
Pods sliding off the slab into the woods. Shower trailer in the background
Pod in the swamp. Don't know if we can get this one out or not.
Supplies stacked in the office!
Ductwork near the kitchen, facing out toward Highway 604. These are the air conditioning/heating ducts that ran betwen each group of 6 pods.

Oh, and we are now hosting one Gustav survivor. Courtesy of Miss Juanita at the Baptist church, who found this guy and 4 siblings inside the church.

We are very hungry. Anyone want a kitten? Black all over, I think it's a boy (hard to tell because he's so SMALL). Unlike our last batch of kittens, this one sucks down the formula as fast as we can deliver it. However, I think our pool of pet owners at Lagniappe Church may have already become saturated. Buenas noches, time for bed!

Pods in the Woods

2008-09-05T16:20:00.002-05:00

We're back in Pearlington and things are looking good. The PDA village seems to be more of a mess than anywhere else (at least anything you can see from the road). Our tent platform got pushed around a bit with floodwater, and the pods floated about as well. Some of them floated right out into the swamp! One is about 70 yards back from the village boundary. However, only about 5 are significantly damaged.

We think we had about 18 inches of water in the village, obviously enough to float these wooden platforms, but not enough to move the wooden benches in the rock garden. No water came into the office, which is up 3 steps from the concrete slab. We did have floodwater in the kitchen, though. It was pretty stinky when we got in there yesterday. Time will tell whether we will have to replace the floor (again!) or any drywall. We have not yet pulled the air conditioners, ducts, hand tools, and other miscellany out of the tool containers, so we don't know how things did in there. The air conditioners may be a loss if the brackish water corroded any key parts. But not that much of a loss - those things are temperamental and almost as frustrating as fire ants!

Busy PDA staff
Jeremy brought his living trailer back in Tuesday afternoon after an initial reconnaisance visit by our boss. He spent most of Wednesday pulling the dictwork out from under the pods and rounding up debris. Yesterday, all the PDA staff and volunteers came over to Pearlington and pulled pods out of the woods while a couple of us made inroads into the kitchen mess.

Today, we are more scattered. A couple people went to Houma to check out the situation there. Kevin, a local resident who works with PDA, received a report that his mobile home's roof was ripped off. Relatives who waited out the storm had gone in to try to grab some of the contents before continuing rain ruined them. We also heard that the building used by that village was fine, but that the pods were scattered. Some other buildings in the area took heavy damage.

A few others stayed in Gulfport to work, while Jeremy and Henry and I kept after Pearlington. It's a little hard to know what's worth doing at this point, since we are debating some alternate options like a MEMA cottage instead of living trailers (the state is apparently alloting a few of them to nonprofit agencies), and keeping a wary eye on Ike in case the storm comes our way.

Tomorrow we are all going to Houma to start cleanup at the village and help Kevin and his family sort things out. After that, I'm going to tie shut the pod doors (the pods in Gulfport are all fine except for several whose doors blew off), try to clear a little more space in the office (most of the supplies from our dining tent are in here), and maybe drive around town a little.

Neighbors
I haven't yet driven down into the low-lying neighborhoods, but in general there are a few tree limbs down, and not much else amiss. Still, we have not heard from all of the residents we work with yet, and some we know have low-elevation homes.

The best estimate right now is that around 100 homes (of 800 or so) in Pearlington received some amount of floodwater. That's any home still on a slab. Anyone whose home is elevated probably did not get any water in the house. So Pearlington in general is in much better shape than we feared. Many projects will be able to pick back up where we started, as soon as we're in shape to house volunteers again.

If you're thinking about bringing a team down, please contact Penny at the call center, but be aware that it may be next week before we have a clear idea of when we'll be open for you.

Chasing Gustav

2008-09-02T16:19:00.002-05:00

Well, I'm still not in Pearlington but after some wangling on the phone I am set to fly in to Gulfport tomorrow morning. I think my dad and a few other folks think I am nuts to be trying to hustle into the area, but I have heard several times from Jeremy and I know there is loads of work to do. In many ways, I wish I had gone against my supervisor's advice and hopped the first plane to NOLA last Thursday so I could have helped with the evacuation. It was a major undertaking. Anyway, I'll be back there soon, pulling on my work boots and blue shirt.

We are starting to get reports from the area, although much of the MS and LA Gulf Coast is still closed down. So here's what I know:

Leslie (PDA Village Coordinator) went to Pearlington this morning and took some photos. I spoke to Jeremy on his way to Pearlington. He says that water came up to about the top step of the Pearlington village office. The kitchen floor and anything left down low will need to be replaced. (Too bad, since we only just redid that floor!) The tent was taken down beforehand, which is a good thing since the floor is broken up. Jeremy says the pods did not fare well.

There has not been much opportunity yet to check homes. However, I have heard that houses on stilts generally did well. Homes in the higher-elevation parts of town should not have received flooding. Homes closer to the Pearl River or the areas south of Route 90 (like Oak Harbor) will have had flooding as high as 8 feet. Turtle Landing apparently had 7.5 feet of water, if that gives you an idea.

Another observation by someone was that wind damage there is consistent with a strong tropical storm, not nearly the devastation wrought by Katrina. In neighboring areas (Slidell, etc), there are reports of scattered buildings with roof or structural damage, but most sustaining only minor damage. There is apparently less mud, debris, and gunk than after Katrina. Still, the homes that were flooded will need to be gutted and put back together.

There is no power or telephone service in Pearlington, and cell phone reception is spotty. I believe the National Guard members in town were staying at the PDA village, although I've not yet heard whether they remained there throughout. In any case, Route 604 is reportedly open from Logtown south to 90, and Route 90 is open.

For further information, I have been checking the following:
http://www.nola.com/ the Times-Picayune in New Orleans
http://www.wlox.com/ WLOX tv in Biloxi
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ the National Hurricane Center to keep track of Gustav, Hanna, Ike, and Josephine
http://www.stpgov.org/ the St Tammany Parish site, which is Slidell area and seems to be the local government with the most info on their website
http://www.msema.org/ Mississippi Emergency Management Agency
http://www.knockatthenarrowgate.blogspot.com/ Henry Paris' (PDA construction manager) blog
http://www.pearlington.blogspot.com/ a blog posted by Canada John, who has apparently worked extensively in Pearlington, maybe with PRC?

I encourage you to continue praying for the residents of the entire Gulf Coast. On the news, you'll mostly see that New Orleans got off lightly, which is good, but you and I know that's not the whole story. The area west of New Orleans had heavier damage, and the entire coastline is full of communities that don't make it to the nightly news. There will be lots of work to do. And no matter how often we tell ourselves, "Possessions can be replaced; it's the people that matter," there is still a lot of heartache when you face the loss of all that stuff. And I am sure there are many asking God, "Why did this have to happen?"

I'll try to send another update if I hear more, especially about some of our friends' homes in Pearlington. However, once I get back to Mississippi I may wind up without internet access or good cell reception for a while, so keep checking the sites above.

Gustav

2008-08-27T12:42:00.002-05:00

I am in Auburn for a little vacation, visiting my family. However, it sounds like Pearlington has been buzzing in my absence. Jeremy said there were a couple of drug busts recently. But the bigger news: Tropical Storm Gustav.

Looks like the Gulf coast may get hammered again. Tropical Storm Gustav is forecast to head for SE Louisiana/ SW Mississippi sometime Sunday or Monday. It passed over Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands as a hurricane, slowed down, and may strengthen again in the Gulf.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at2.shtml?5day#contents for the National Hurricane Center summary.

PDA staff and volunteers are preparing for evacuation should it be necessary. I wish I were there to help, but my supervisor advised me not to try to change to an earlier flight back, at least not until they know more about the potential path and intensity of the storm. As you know, it's difficult to predict the specifics more than a couple days in advance.

Pray for the islands, where flooding will be exacerbated because Fay just doused them a few days ago. Pray for the Gulf states. Jeremy (my co-worker who's back in Pearlington now) told me he has talked to a couple of homeowners already who are full of dread and memories of Katrina, fearing they will have to begin the rebuilding process all over again.

Log-eyes and Needle's Eye

2008-08-17T20:05:00.009-05:00

OK, so this post has very little to do with PDA or the Gulf Coast. Just what I'm thinking about this afternoon. Do we take sin seriously enough? Do we know how much we need a Savior? My life before I asked Jesus to take charge was not as obviously messy as some, but I'm no less a sinner. So when I sing the hymn And Can it Be that I Should Gain the verse

Long my imprisoned sprit lay,

fast bound in sin and nature's night;

thine eye diffused a quickening ray;

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

my chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed thee

really ought to remind me that I was formerly a slave to sin and a prisoner of death. No more!
[http://gbgm-umc.org/Umhistory/Wesley/hymns/umh363.stm for the full text of this hymn.]

Log-Eye

This morning the message at Lagniappe was on the older son in what the NIV calls the Parable of the Lost Son. As an aside, Pr. Jean notes this is incorrect; look at what Jesus says in Luke 15: 11

Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons..."

(As an aside to the aside, this is right after he tells the parables about the lost coin and the lost sheep, so clearly he's hitting hard on the same point three times in a row. Best pay attention!)
So Pr. Jean says it should be called the Parable of the Lost Sons (plural.)

Today we were looking at the older son, whose issue is that he's lost and doesn't know it because he's too busy being The Good Son. One of the symptoms is what my college friend Jessica said would make the Top Ten of insults for churchgoers: Log-Eye! You know, the state of seeing ever so clearly the speck of sawdust (sin, hangup, etc) in your neighbor's eye while overlooking the log in your own eye.

I never noticed before, but the older son is quite specific about the failings of his younger brother and totally oblivious to his own. "I have never disobeyed you, Dad," he complains, while standing in the yard, refusing to obey his father's wish that he should come in to the party. Meanwhile he insults his father too, saying he has slaved for him all these years. Really, son? Is that what you think of your loving Father?

How many times lately have I been guilty of refusing to rejoice over the lost ones who are found? Or resenting my Father in Heaven for being so darn far above my petty ways?

Needle's Eye

Speaking of eyes, my very favorite band is Caedmon's Call. I've been humming one of their songs for days, so I thought I'd share. There is so much packed into this one! I was thinking of making a faithbook page with this song, but I don't even know where to start. However, I did find this fascinating picture by Vladimir Kush that seems to relate. If it's hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom, just make the needle's eye much, much bigger: define your terms broadly enough and it's easy to think that we're not rich and the road to righteousness is wide enough to accomodate our particular sins and hangups and desires (but not those of the people whose eyes we're busy picking specks out of).

There’s Only One (Holy One)
Caedmon’s Call

Left his seamless robe behind
Woke up in a stable crying
Lived and died and rose again
Savior for a guilty land

It's a story like a children's tune
And it's grown familiar as the moon
So now I ride my camel high
And I'm aiming for the needle's eye

I chased the wind, but I chased in vain
I chased the earth, but it would not sustain

There's only one who never fails
To beckon the morning light
There's only one who sets loose the gales
And ties the trees down tight
When all around my soul gives way
He is all my hope and stay
There's only one, only one Holy One

Lord, You are my Prince of Peace
But this war brings me to my knees
See there's a table You've prepared
And all my enemies are there

But where my Shepherd leads
Where else can I go?
Who else fills my cup till it overflows?

There's only one who never fails
To beckon the morning light
There's only one who sets loose the gales
And ties the trees down tight
When all around my soul gives way
He is all my hope and stay
There's only one, only one Holy One

To the solid rock I fly
Though He bids me come and die
There's only one, only one Holy One

Pay it Forward

2008-08-14T17:51:00.003-05:00

Storm Surge
The other day I was browsing through some internet pages about Pearlington, and I came across this one that gives an incredible amount of information about the storm surge and why it was so destructive for the Gulf Coast. The index is here: http://www.wunderground.com/education/Katrinas_surge_contents.asp and she gets to Pearlington in Part 7.

Pay if Forward
So another man showed up at my door asking for help this week. He's homeless, living in a battered old Chevy someone gave him right after Katrina. He told me he was technically homeless before the storm, too, but he had a camp set up on the bayou and supported himself with odd jobs and lots of fishing. When Katrina blew over, he was safe in a shelter. As people started leaving, the workers loaded him up with clothes and supplies. He told them thanks, but he didn't know how he'd manage all that stuff; he was on foot. So someone found this old car to give him.

A while back, he was ticketed for driving without car insurance, which of course is a struggle to afford. He skipped that town for a while and didn't go to court. But then, being flat broke and hungry and hot, he thought, why should I roast out here when I could turn myself in and enjoy a month of relative luxury at the state's expense? He figured it would be a nice change to get three squares and a shower every day, plus air conditioning. The police said they weren't interested, thank you very much.

I have found out that there are no homeless shelters in Hancock County. There's one over in Biloxi. However, if my friend went there, he'd lose his food stamp benefits, which are apparently by county. To get them there, he'd have to go through the paperwork all over again. He's also limited in what he can do, work-wise, because he's got heart trouble and a pacemaker that jolts him every time his heart rate goes too high.

Anyway, this man stopped by this week to ask if I could help him get some razors and Maalox, things that food stamps won't cover. By now I can't recall exactly who has donated to my Sock Fund, but I gave him $20 that might have come from you. I think that will keep him in disposable razors for a while. I also passed him a card for the county aid hotline, in hopes that if he tells them what he told me, they may be able to refer him to someone who can help in a more lasting way.

I have discussed with several people the challenge of deciding whether to hand someone money, or whether to hold out until you can buy something concrete to make sure your donation can't be so easily converted to beer or drugs. Jeremy and Kaitlyn and I have been approached several times by people asking for gas money, but who backed off when we offered to go with them to the pump and fill up. This man struck me as honest, though, so I went for it.

When I handed him the $20, he said he'd pay it back when he's able. I told him he didn't have to worry about that (not really believing it would happen anyway), and he said he wants to pay back everyone who has helped him. "That way," he said, "when you're back home and somebody comes to you needing a sack of groceries, you'll have the money to help them, too. It's my way to pay it forward." Well, what could I say to that? I hope someday he does get to pay it forward. If nothing else, his story is an eye-opener for me on the challenges of putting a life back together. There are lots more obstacles than I had thought about before. Not only is it hard to get a job when you don't get to shower and shave every day, it's hard to get to one from Pearlington unless you have a car. But to have a car, you have to have money for insurance. There are programs around to help the elderly and the young, but if you're an adult without children, you're pretty much on your own.

Jesus said the poor will always be with us, and gave his followers a charge to help them. Can't we change our society so it doesn't trap people this way?

Sundries

2008-08-06T18:37:00.007-05:00

Bush hog

I've been a little surprised and relieved that this summer has not been as hot as I expected (low to mid 90s most days and 70s at night, rather than upper 90s to low 100s). However, it's still too darn hot! Did you ever hear the saying, "Horses sweat, men perspire, ladies glow"? Pshaw!

This morning I was mowing the lawn, my least favorite task, and I was wet from head to toe. Now, from the knees down that was mostly dew, since if you wait to mow until the grass is dry you'll never mow here at all. But from the crown of my hat to my knees...that was pretty much just sweat.

Then the Lord arranged a break for me: the string came loose on the bush mower, and I don't have any more of the correct diameter. So the weeds around the perimeter of camp will wait 'til tomorrow.

Song of Solomon
I attended Bible study Monday night with the Lagniappe crew. The group is working through Ephesians, but every 4th week, they pause and study something topical. This week: Bases, or "Exactly how far can you go while dating and still be OK?" in a Christian moral sense. Very interesting topic, especially for a group that changes membership so often that they (I should say we, now that I've attended 2 weeks in a row) do introductions at every meeting.

Jean, the pastor, was clearly determined that this should be a very real conversation, and achieved his aim with 2 rather bold moves: first, the introductions. Instead of going 'round telling our name and favorite movie, or some similar safe item, we told our name and first location (on the planet, not the person) we kissed someone. Second, Jean opened the discussion by asking, "Does God want you to have lots of enjoyable sex? Back your answer up with a Scripture reference." That, of course, is how we wound up in the Song of Solomon. The discussion that followed was enlightening, even for a topic that I thought I had explored pretty thoroughly before.

I wish I could share this Bible study group with several other people I know. Most of all, my brother. I was thinking of all the times he and other people complain to me of how churchgoers can't handle their serious questions, of how churchgoers are all hypocrites and don't really understand their own faith anyway. But here is one group that's tackling the tough questions and not afraid to end a discussion with just as many questions on the table as when they began. They're working hard to understand why we believe as we do, and what it means to live a life consistent with that belief.

Might I suggest...
September 5th is the United Way Day of Caring, a big event where local volunteers come out to tackle one-shot projects (contact your local United Way to see if you can help! Many employers participate by allowing workers to take paid time to go volunteer for this one day.) I've got a few folks from my big telephone rally that are back in their homes, but need deck sealer put on the wheelchair ramp, or a shed painted, or construction debris removed from the yard. So I was out this afternoon, visiting the home owners and laying eyes on the projects to get an idea of how many people we'll need.

It was a pleasure to get out and spend a little time with some local residents. AJ was telling me about his Katrina experience. He had 9 people in his home, and they thought they were doing fine after the eye of the storm passed. Then AJ walked out in the street and saw the wall of water approaching. In 10 minutes, they had 6 and 1/2 feet of water in the house. AJ rounded everyone up in his boat, swam to his truck for a pry bar, and broke into his own attic crawlspace to give everyone a safe place to ride out the storm surge.

Then he told me about 2 crucifixes that had hung on the living room wall. The water line was even with the cross point on them. He said he felt as if Jesus had halted the water right there, saying, "That's enough!" As one volunteer was helping AJ muck out, he noticed the crosses and asked, "Are you planning to re-hang the crucifixes when you're done rebuilding? Might I suggest you hang them a little lower to the floor?"

This same family had been discussing whether to evacuate north or try to ride out Katrina in town. Obviously, they stayed. Late in the evening before the storm, an elderly neighbor called, in a panic. He was supposed to have been evacuated by the authorities, but had somehow been left behind. AJ brought him to his house. Later, AJ looked at this neighbor's house: closer to the river, it had been swept off its foundations. He told me this neighbor moves slowly, with a walker. "He would have died in that house," AJ said. He suggests that the Lord kept his family in town in order to preserve this neighbor's life. It's clear to me that, whatever else came out of Katrina, this family has gained a clear understanding of what's important: life, not property. And I think they have been drawn closer to God through their experience.

Passion Flower
Before I left AJ's house, he plucked a passion flower from the vine in his yard and handed it to me. He told me the popular legend of this plant, which I'd never heard before. I always assumed passion fruit was a reference to the emotion, not the final events of Christ's earthly life. But here's what he told me: The sepals and petals represent the Apostles. The fringe-like part represents the crown of thorns. The three dark flower-reproductive parts in the middle (my botany prof would be disappointed, but I can never keep anthers and stamens and things straight in my head) are the three nails, and the five lighter ones represent the five wounds that Christ received on the Cross. What a beautiful flower!

Glory and Fire Ants

2008-07-30T19:41:00.004-05:00

Tools

Well, it's been a quiet week in Pearlington. I finished calling all the homeowners we haven't been in touch with. Most are either done, in which case I closed their files, or are still working on rebuilding and gave me permission to transfer their information. Since we won't have a case manager after the end of this month, the Hancock Housing Resource Center will be handling their cases to help them find funding.

There are a few folks we weren't able to contact by phone, mostly people we haven't been in contact with since 2006. For a while, it looked like I would have to go door to door and pin up letters to tell them what I would have said on the phone. Most of Pearlington does not have postal delivery; we all have post office boxes in this warehouse type building out on the highway. I guess in a small enough town, the Postal Service contracts out the office. This one is part post office, part boat repair shop. With only the physical addresses for these folks, I didn't think I could mail the letters.

However, I was saved from traipsing all over Pearlington, searching for addresses. On a whim, I stepped into the post office and asked the worker if she could match up the names with box numbers. She said yes! What a sweet heart. I'm sure it cost her extra time to search out all those names.

So that wrapped up last week, and let me tell you - I was totally spoiled. From the all-indoor, all air conditioned task of last week, I've moved on to reorganizing the tool trailer over at our Gulfport village, Orange Grove. It badly needs it, and the last worksite coordinator there wasn't able to get to it. It's hot and humid and dusty all at once, enough to make me really appreciate a shower at the end of the day.

Now that I've been around this construction stuff for a couple months, I can at least identify what most of the gadgets and gizmos are for. That makes it easier to group categories together! All the drywall stuff in one section, all the saws and blades together, and all the mysterious electrical parts in their own corner near the plumbing supplies.

So far I've found a few things to make me wonder. For instance, there is a huge box of work gloves. Some are your standard fabric-backed leather gloves, some the cotton kind with little rubber grippies, and there are a few of the gardening gloves marketed to women, with cute duckies or flowers on them. But there are loads of spare left-hand gloves. Too many righties have bit the dust.

Then there are the little oddments that some volunteers believe are absolutely essential, but I know my co-worker Jeremy would sneer at them. Like the corner bead tool, which he specifically made fun of a while back. And did you know, WD-40 also comes in a pen? And then there's the blue painter's tape. One of my former bosses, while overseeing a crew of outdoor educators repainting a kitchen, asserted it's only for pansies. He thinks any painter worth his salt should be able to cut in a straight edge with a decent brush.

I've made some progress in there, but there's plenty left to do. Tomorrow, I'll tackle the multitude of randomly assorted screws, nails, and bits of hardware. Once the inside is done, I'll head outside, where weeds are obliterating the ladders, paint buckets, and a collection of hand tools with dismaying speed.

This work might not be the most exciting, certainly not as rewarding as working with the everyday heroes on the volunteer teams or the faith giants who live here. But it's all part of making the villages run smoothly so when the teams get there, they don't spend half a day searching for a drill bit or a matched set of knee pads.

Some more of my co-workers are leaving at the end of the week. They're going through exit interviews with the headquarters staff, and we were talking a little about the question, "What have you learned?" Some goofy things came up (including Rachel's greatest discovery, that even grown men miss pretty often - this discovery courtesy of cleaning the toilet trailer). But one of my biggest lessons so far is this: all the little, seemingly insignificant chores and details add up. They are all essential for the recovery process, and the people we're serving are grateful that someone is sorting the nails and swabbing down the toilet trailer and making one more trip to the home store for another bucket of drywall mud.

Fire Ants
One success story: today I rode over to D'Iberville, MS with one of the headquarters staff. There was a PDA village there for a while. It was taken over by another group briefly, but it's closed down for serious now. All the homes that needed to be rebuilt in that town are done, all 1,005 or something like that. Glory! The Boy Scouts are coming in next week to demolish the tent platforms, for which service they get to take home the canvas tents. How good to hear that one place is actually done!

Jan and I were there to pick up the cots and mattresses that belong to PDA. At the bottom of the stack, we found a colony of fire ants. I should say Jan found them, by way of being bitten on the hand several times. Not so glorious! I am not sure what God was thinking when He created some of these critters. Couldn't the bats live off of a thousand other kinds of insects, without us having to have mosquitoes? And who eats fire ants, anyway? As an outdoor educator, I've been taught (and taught to others) that everything in nature has a purpose. And for some things, like redwood trees and mountains and stars, it's easy to make the case that, regardless of their function in nature, they would have a great reason to exist just because they show forth the glory of the Creator God. I have a very hard time extending that reasoning to fire ants.

Then again, I have never spent much time with Jan before and maybe we had a bonding moment over the can of bug spray. If the fire ants in this particular instance served to turn an ordinary chore into a memorable work experience... it's no use. I still don't like them.
That's the news from Pearlington, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the bugs are above average.

Telephone Tag

2008-07-18T14:56:00.002-05:00

Here's the latest project: to contact all the people in our files who we haven't heard from in a while, find out if they still need assistance, and transfer their case information to Hancock Housing Resource Center. If you know me at all, you know spending hours on the phone is not really my cup of tea, but like many things here, it is suprisingly challenging and rewarding.

I have a file drawer full of over 100 people's contact information. Sometimes the files have nothing more than some notes jotted on copy paper in the hectic days of spring 2006, when people were returning to the area and assessing the damages. Sometimes they are crammed with case notes, grant applications, receipts from the big box home stores, and updates. As I call them, I receive an equally varying response. Some happy home owners tell me, "We're back in the house. Go ahead and close our file." You can just hear the pleasure and satisfaction in their voices. Some are a little more reluctant, asking to be kept on the records in case they need anything else.

A couple examples that show the extremes: I just talked to Mr. Frank, who spent the first 18 months after Katrina volunteering, helping other people rebuild. He had filed for help with PDA, but told me that, as a Christian, he didn't feel it right to accept volunteer help right away. He said it was more important to help the elderly and disabled residents first. "My house doesn't have to be perfect for me to live there," he said. He has now gotten a job again and started working on his own house. He told me to go ahead and close his file.

I also talked to Ms. Pauline, who's on her second hip replacement. Volunteers worked on her home last year. They put a ramp on her back porch, but unfortunately it leads to a sliding door that doesn't lock from the outside, so she still can't come and go independently. She's waiting for a group to come and put a ramp on the front porch, or change the back door.

Then there are the folks who fall through the cracks in the system. I spoke with a couple who have been denied for grants twice because they make too much money. The trick is, the husband is on Social Security Disability. If his SS income were not reported on their taxes, their income would appear to be much less. They are pretty disgusted with the system and the fact that it's been two years since their initial application, and they are still waiting for help. It must be so frustrating to wait this long on a faceless system. I hope that, by transferring them to an agency with plenty of case managers, someone will be able to help them sort this out.

I'll keep working through the stacks. Close, Transfer, Left Message, Send to my boss, and Pin letter to front door (those are the ones whose phone numbers are not longer valid.)

Henry's blog

2008-07-12T21:08:00.003-05:00

For lots more detail on construction projects PDA has been working on, visit Henry's blog at http://knockatthenarrowgate.blogspot.com/
Henry is the construction manager for PDA on the Gulf Coast, supervising work and worksite assignment managers mostly for the MS camps, since the Presbytery of South Louisiana pretty much takes care of the LA camps. Among other things, he performs construction assessments in homes, then communicates the need for work and materials to the case managers so they can submit accurate funding requests to the grant writers. We were working together a lot this week, since Jeremy is out of town, and I discovered along the way that Henry is a much more faithful blogger than I!

Transition

2008-07-12T20:44:00.003-05:00

Well, our powerful women have headed home to Philadelphia, and the Pearlington PDA village will be quiet for a long spell now. It's been hard, the last week or two, to explain to residents that, although we sure want to help them, we won't have any teams until mid-September. It's typical for the PDA villages to shut down in August, since it is the hottest month, and the time off gives the staff a chance to catch up on camp maintenance. But I do think the flow of volunteer teams is slowing down.

That's expected - after all, it's been a long time since Katrina - but a few of us suspect that some of the most difficult cases are yet to come: homeowners who fall into the cracks between need and provision because they make a little too much money, yet they're struggling to put gas in the car and pay off the credit card that they've been using to pay the phone bill. Homeowners who lack the inner resources and gumption that have led so many other folks to persist in asking until they received aid. If this suspicion is correct, the need for volunteer labor will be even greater.

Come on down!
As we head into this regrouping time, I'm personally looking forward to a change of pace - some days of steady labor out in the heat, repairing pods and keeping an eye on the weeds and fire ants; some days of relative ease, working through files and making phone calls. But my next challenge is closely tied to a problem for PDA. Right now, we are desperately short of long-term volunteers for the fall. Aside from me and Jeremy, all the village managers and worksite managers are leaving in July or August, and there are no replacements waiting in the wings.

I was originally scheduled to head home at the end of July, but I've promised to stay a while longer, maybe until September. The next question is, will I stay even longer than that? Once I leave, I'll be heading back into the teeth of the job search process. But here, I'm doing meaningful work that I seem to be pretty good at (at least, I've had more compliments than complaints!). I may not be making any money to speak of, but that's never been very important to me. Maybe I should stay awhile. I'm not very good at discerning God's will for the future, so pray for me!

Regardless, here's your invitation: if you or anyone you know has been thinking about PDA service, now's the time! There is a need for:
Volunteer Village Managers: oversee the management and function of a PDA volunteer village in the Gulf Coast, including hospitality, administration, logistics, leadership, delegation and group facilitation. This is really about keeping the camp organized and the people fed.
Worskite Assignment Managers: Schedule the work for PDA work teams at sites that are in need of rebuilding, mucking out or other reconstruction projects. Construction experience is really helpful.

If you're interested or know someone else who can give a month or three, visit http://www.pcusa.org/pda/help.htm and scroll down to the "Make work a witness" section for more information on these roles. There is an easy application available online.

powerful women, and gumbo as a sermon illustration

2008-07-06T11:31:00.002-05:00

Email me
If you want to get in touch, please click "view my complete profile" at the top right of the page, then click "email." I'd love to hear from you!

A new floor
OK, so it's been a while since my last posting. We had 2 rather difficult weeks when it was all I could do to keep the essentials going, so now that I have a little spare time again, we'll have to catch up. Two of our homeowners are really close to being back in their homes, and we're pretty excited - but a little disappointed that this means we won't be spending as much time with them!

Part of the challenge recently has been working without a kitchen. The floor badly needed to be replaced, so when some extra heavy laborers came available, in the form of some volunteer firefighters, we jumped on it. They helped us tear up the old vinyl tile and subfloor, and laid a new subfloor. Then Jeremy and I got to choose the new flooring. I said, let's get something that shows the dirt, so that we'll be impelled to mop more often! Keeping a camp kitchen clean is a real challenge, and we can use all the help we can get! So we got a big roll of light-colored linoleum, sweated and hauled it into place, cleaned up all the glue that somehow got everywhere, stuck on some commercial-grade rubber baseboard, caulked the edges and seams, and finally got to put the kitchen back together.

I'm so thankful that this week's team includes someone who grew up around food service, so she is making sure everything goes back clean and organized. This has been a great opportunity to clear out old food inventory and start fresh.

Powerful women
This week's team from the Philly area is made up of 15 women and 3 men. These ladies are powerhouses, mostly veterans of previous trips to Pearlington and some classes at their local home construction store. The more experienced workers are teaching the newer ones how to use a cordless drill and tape a drywall seam, and they all have the invaluable skill of seeing what needs to be done and pitching in to make it happen. They have a great sense of humor, a great leader who's leading us through a week-long focus on gratitude, and are even arranging to take care of the recycling (we go through a lot of water bottles here, but there's no rural recycling on the Gulf Coast). Oh, yeah, and the men are pretty handy, too! :)

Gumbo as a sermon illustration
Well, we are in Mississippi, after all! I was at Lagniappe church again this morning, where we are continuing with a series of reflections on the Lord's Prayer. We're up to the petition, "Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors" The sermon today was fantastic! Pr. Jean showed how our apprehension of forgiveness is demonstrated by our extension of forgiveness. He pointed out an aspect of the parable of the unmerciful servant (Matthew 18:21-35)that I'd never realized before: the man who owes the king ten thousand talents really owes a ridiculous sum, an amount so great that it must represent a debt too great to be repaid at all. In fact, it can be equated with the full weight of sin, our debt which was paid on the cross of Christ.

In the Lord's Prayer, we pray that God will forgive us to the same extent that we forgive others. We pray that the just judge will pause before the judgement, weigh the way we treat our neighbors, and pass sentence on us accordingly. How wonderful that, knowing our hard hearts, the Father has nonetheless forgiven us first, then instructs us to go and do likewise! Now I can see that this parable points to the cross and invites me to weigh my ten thousand talents of canceled debt against the hundred denarii of petty debt owed to me and conclude that it is nothing.

So here's the gumbo: Pr. Jean told about how tempting it is to serve gumbo with an eye to the best pieces of shrimp, crab, and sausage, and let those tidbits slide back out of the ladle and into the broth until you get down to filling your own bowl. In the Lord's prayer, he suggests, we invite God to use for us the same ladle we stingily use for our neighbors. But God generously uses his ladle instead. For the complete sermon, visit http://www.lagniappechurch.com/ and go to the podcast, and choose sermon #7 of 11, "Forgive us our debts."

Canoeing in the Pearl

2008-06-22T07:25:00.003-05:00

OK, so this post is mostly fluff. But Jeremy and I went in together on a sweet little 14-foot canoe, and last evening we took it out and put in one of the channels of the Pearl River. IT was great! We drove into Alabama to pick up this canoe, brought it home and washed and waxed it, got some paddles and PFDs, and loaded it all in the truck with the dog. Moose was pretty agitated in the boat, and kept jumping around and climbing over our laps. It's remarkably hard to keep a canoe balanced when the dog keeps wandering back and forth and jumping over the thwarts! She only fell out once. We hauled her back in after a short swim, and kept on paddling. When we got a little further up, we saw a gator, so after that, Jeremy kept a tight hold on her until she settled down for a nap in the bottom of the canoe. We are eagerly anticipating spending most of our limited free time paddling around, exploring the channels in the marshland and letting God's creation refresh us.

In other news, we are going to visit a new church this morning. I was just on the website; they have a wonderful photo gallery of hurricane damage and recovery. You can view it at http://www.lagniappechurch.com/Photo/PhotoGallery.aspx

Entertaining Angels

2008-06-20T06:45:00.002-05:00

My favorite game, Sight-the-King, continues. This morning, one of the home owners with whom we're working stopped by with a flat of donuts for the volunteer village. She had to run out to Slidell to get them (a 20-minute drive). This family is so thrilled to work alongside the volunteers who are building their house. It reinforces what I'm reading in John Piper's Desiring God; Love is the result of joy in the Lord that overflows to meet the needs of others. Granted, donuts don't fulfil a need, but you get the idea!

Last night, Jeremy (my co-worker) led us in contemplating Hebrews 13: 1-2 "Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it." Not only are homeowners in this situation, hosting volunteers in their homes, sharing their stories and exhibiting the humilty that's required in order to ask for help; the volunteers may also be entertaining angels as they show love to the residents of Pearlington.

In a similar vein, I discovered this poem in a book of Wendell Berry poetry left here in camp. It's called The Guest and I hope I'm not breaking any copyright laws by including it here. It's a challenging piece that speaks so directly to my heart when I meet people who ask for help, and when I struggle in my mind over whether to respond or whether to hold back because I fear the money will go to feed a drug habit, or just because I don't know how to really make a difference.

-------

Washed into the doorway
by the wake of the traffic,
he wears humanity
like a third-hand shirt
- blackened with enough
of Manhattan's dirt to sprout
a tree, or poison one.
His empty hand has led him
where he has come to.
Our differences claim us.
He holds out his hand,
in need of all that's mine.

And we're joined, as deep
as son and father. His life
is offered me to choose.

Shall I begin servitude
to him? Let this cup pass.
Who am I? But charity must
suppose, knowing no better,
that this is a man fallen
among theives, or come
to this strait by no fault
- that our difference
is not a judgment,
though I can afford to eat
and am made his judge.

I am, I nearly believe,
the Samaritan who fell
into the ambush of his heart
on the way to another place.
My stranger waits, his hand
held out like something to read,
as though its emptiness
is an accomplishment.
I give him a smoke and the price
of a meal, no more

- not sufficient kindness
or believeable sham.
I paid him to remain strange
to my threshold and table,
to permit me to forget him -
knowing I won't. He's the guest
of my knowing, though not asked.

-------

Lord, in all our striving, keep us in your will.

Habakkuk's Prayer

2008-06-09T20:42:00.003-05:00

We have some new volunteers this week, and some returning for their 3rd time in Pearlington. On their first day of work, I think both old and new are struggling with the "why" questions of this place. Why would God allow a hurricane to crush a tiny community that already had so many problems? A huge part of the answer, of course, is that God is sovereign and he works out his purpose in the world in ways that we often don't understand. This evening we heard from Habakkuk 3; here are some selections (you may want to read the whole chapter yourself, or indeed the whole book; it's short, and the writer wrestles with some of these same questions):

2 LORD, I have heard of your fame;
I stand in awe of your deeds, O LORD.
Renew them in our day,
in our time make them known;
in wrath remember mercy.

4 His splendor was like the sunrise;
rays flashed from his hand,
where his power was hidden.

6 He stood, and shook the earth;
he looked, and made the nations tremble.
The ancient mountains crumbled
and the age-old hills collapsed.
His ways are eternal.

8 Were you angry with the rivers, O LORD ?
Was your wrath against the streams?
Did you rage against the sea
when you rode with your horses
and your victorious chariots?
9 You uncovered your bow,
you called for many arrows. Selah
You split the earth with rivers;
10 the mountains saw you and writhed.
Torrents of water swept by;
the deep roared
and lifted its waves on high.
11 Sun and moon stood still in the heavens
at the glint of your flying arrows,
at the lightning of your flashing spear.
12 In wrath you strode through the earth
and in anger you threshed the nations.

15 You trampled the sea with your horses,
churning the great waters.
16 I heard and my heart pounded,
my lips quivered at the sound;
decay crept into my bones,
and my legs trembled.
17 Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
19 The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to go on the heights.

That's the wonderful thing about God's word: the writers freely express their questions, their doubts and struggles, but they always lead you back around to trusting faith in our sovereign Lord. Shall we accept only easy and pleasant gifts from our Father, or do we observe with gratitude how good to us he is in the pleasant times and use that experience to help us trust him in the hard times? It's a lesson to keep learning.

Bright colors and faded photos

Some of the volunteers were sharing their observations of the day. There's so much to see and hear! One woman observed how raw the hurts from the storm still are and how important it still is for residents here to keep on telling their stories.

Another volunteer described the pictures on the wall in the house he's working at. The family doesn't have much left from their life before the storm, just a few boxes of water-damaged keepsakes. There's a collage of water-stained photos in one frame, and an aged photo of a man in the 1900s. This volunteer can't wait to meet the homeowner and ask her who it is. Why is such a tattered remnant so important? Maybe we'll find out this week.

In that same house, there's a bedroom that's been painted a bright pumpkin orange. The teenage girl whose bedroom this will be is apparently interested in Moroccan design, and requested the color. She's so eager to get back in the house so she can invite friends over again. her family is living in temporary housing and she hasn't been able to host a sleepover since Katrina. This week, we're getting the family a little closer to that goal, one floor tile at a time.

Training topics

2008-06-08T09:42:00.003-05:00

Jeremy is back and we're getting ready for a new volunteer crew. This week's special: a new and improved orientation when a team arrives. We spent two days this week at a Gulf Coast PDA staff training (ok, one day of training and one day at the beach). Along with some additional thoughts for orientation, we focused on several important things:

Confidentiality
Not only is it key for us as long term volunteers to protect people's information, to respect their stories and their right to tell those stories to whom they choose, we have to remind volunteer teams to do the same. With so many people blogging, emailing, sharing photos in newsletters and presentations, it's easy to forget the privacy issue.

Finances
We operate on funds donated by individuals and congregations through One Great Hour of Sharing and specific gifts. Building supplies come through a variety of community grants and federal funds. We have to keep up with the paperwork so that, in the end, someone will be able to track it all and tell the donors and agencies exactly how the money was spent.

Hurricanes
We're officially in hurricane season, from now until November. Our evacuation plan is a wonder to behold, although it's hard for me to imagine how we would be able to stash all the stuff from outdoor or temporary storage, into solid structures or sea containers within the 48-100 hour window before a hurricane is forecasted to strike land. Not to worry, though -regardless of how well or poorly we crammed all the cots, food, tools, tables, and garden supplies into the kitchen, office and tool trailers, we're outta here 48 hours prior to landfall. Then there'll be a massive PDA RV park in a church parking lot in Meridian, MS.

What's cool about that is that we'd be located right by a FEMA and Red Cross staging area, so if the big one comes around, all the PDA Gulf Coast staff will be situated in a place where we could help with the immediate response. Then, once the storm was gone, we'd also be set up with a basic fleet of tools and RVs to head back to damaged areas and start the rebuild process. God willing, though, none of that will be necessary.

Images from Pearlington

2008-06-01T21:28:00.007-05:00

Just a few pictures for your viewing pleasure.

This sign was created by an artistic volunteer group, out of objects found around town after the hurricane.

The volunteer village sits on the site of the former post office. I found this image of the post office rubble on the Web. Our portapotties sit on the front sidewalk.

These are an (apparently) adandoned business and home in Pearlington. The population of the town is estimated at about half what it was before Katrina.

This is the new community center that's being built between the volunteer village and the fire hall. Volunteers come in periodically to work on it, and I've seen a convict crew out working on the grounds. The other picture here is one of the houses we're working on, with some of our volunteers on the scaffold.

And finally, because I'm dog-sitting, one picture of Moose helping me sweep out a pod:

God bless!