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"Be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be brave. Be strong. Be loving in everything you do." - I Corinthians 16:13-14 |
Holy Cross Anglican Church of Loganville, Georgia, supported by relief funding from the American Anglican Council, assembled and delivered 600 cleaning kits with help of Stand Firm and the good folks manning the Coast Episcopal School relief center. Our thanks to Janet Ott, Guy Ray, and the rest of the workers and volunteers who helped set up and assemble the kits. Following are some pictures of the efforts, and scenes from Waveland and Bay St. Louis.
In Waveland, the destruction is almost complete. It is not simply dramatic; it is apocalyptic. This is the scene entering Waveland from I-10. Many vehicles' gas tanks showed signs of having been ripped loose and siphoned empty:
Can Two Faiths Embrace One Future: A Foundational Inquiry by
Presbyterian Lay Committee is a very interesting paper which you may want to read.
Father Chris Colby, rector of Trinity Church in Pass Christian, is scheduled to be on ABC's Good Morning, America tomorrow (Tuesday, September 27th). He's been asked to be ready at 6:30 am, which could mean he's standing by for a live interview, or for a taped interview that will be broadcast during the show. GMA is on from 7am - 9am central time.
With the news of the Presiding Bishop's Special Commission on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion and the attendant hand-wringing and foot-stomping, I wanted to share a few passages from a book I'm reading now, Erwin Raphael McManus's The Barbarian Way:
We find Judaism in the same tragic condition during the days of Jesus. Really it's an incredibly strange scenario to watch. Given that Jesus Himself is God of Israel, it should strike us as extraordinary that He was not welcome there. But then again, Jesus didn't like it there. One of Jesus' most violent moments took place in the temple. He became disgusted by what he saw. He was so incensed by how Judaism had become a religious retail business that He began to destroy all of the sellers' merchandise.
It's important to point out that Jesus was not against business. His anger wasn't a response to people selling something of value or providing a meaningful service. His anger was evoked because the sellers of goods had made access to God a business. They had made forgiveness something you could purchase. They had made guilt and shame of others the marketplace for their profit. They had made the house of God into a den of robbers and thieves. They had become so good at religion that they had no need for God. They were so full of themselves that they had no room for God. When it came down to it, they loved their civilized religion far more than they longed to know the God who created them. They treasured the civilization built around their religion and despised the primal faith from which it was born. They would rather have the temple than the Presence.
So Jesus let them have it, which begs the question: What good is a house of God if God no longer chooses to live there?...
There may be no clearer a place where we see the division between the civilized and the barbarian. We discover the painful reality that even God's people, when we become civilized, are more than willing to crucify God. When we choose a civilized faith, God becomes, at the very least, an irritant and, at worst, an enemy to our faith. We find in Jesus that the hostility of God turns toward empty religion and the mercy of God turns toward the outcast and sinner. The way that Jesus called the masses to choose was far too barbaric for those who held the positions of religious leadership. The claim that He must become the sacrificial Lamb who would take away the sins of the world was an insult to their sense of piety and self-righteousness.
...
Two thousand years ago God started a revolt against the religion He started. So don't ever put it past God to cause a groundswell movement against churches and Christian institutions that bear His name. If He was willing to turn Judaism upside down, don't think for a moment our institutions are safe from divine revolt. I am convinced that even now there are multitudes of followers of Jesus Christ who are sick and tired of the church playing games and playing down the call of God. My travels only confirm that the murmurings of revolution are everywhere. I am convinced that there is an uprising in the works and that no one less than God is behind it.
Friday, September 16, St. Andrews member Wilson Carroll and I loaded up a carload and a truckload of relief and office supplies, and drove from Jackson through Hattiesburg, where we stopped at The Rev. Susan Bear's Church of the Ascension to pick up some more relief supplies, and continued on to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
There will perhaps be a time when I can try to make sense of what we saw, but this is not it. What follows is simply my attempt to describe what we saw, and give you a small glimpse into the destruction to the Mississippi Gulf Coast caused by Hurricane Katrina.
If you'd like to make a secure, tax-deductible donation to the American Anglican Council's Hurricane Relief Fund, please click here.This is what many highway medians look like beginning a little north of Hattiesburg and continuing south. The destruction to trees is tremendous and consistent like this for about 85 miles inland:
As dramatic as the destruction to trees is, there is an eerie quality to the look of most of the trees that were left standing. It is as if you're looking at a snapshot taken during a heavy wind. This is not such a snapshot; this is just how the trees look now standing still in no wind:
As you're driving, from just south of Hattiesburg and continuing all the way to the coast, it sounds like it's sprinkling. But it's not rain, it's love bugs hitting your windshield:
From just north of Gulfport all the way to the coast, most of the billboards left standing look like this:
From a distance, they appear at first glance to have been folded over like a Rolodex card, but what has actually happened is that they have been "racked": They are actually two billboards, one facing each direction of traffic. They are not back-to-back displays like the print on both sides of page; they are angled in a "V" slightly off the perpindicular to the road. Since I-10 runs east to west, and these billboards are on the south side of the interstate, the wide end of the "V" points south; the apex points north. The wind that came in off the Gulf of Mexico from the south thus entered the wide part of the V and encountered something like a sail, and pushed the billboards over not from front to back, but from side to side, so that they resemble the frame of a boat hull:
Humor was not a casualty of Katrina:
As you move closer to the beach in Pass Christian, the military presence becomes very obvious: Checkpoints and the constant sound of choppers overhead.
At the intersection a few doors down from Father Chris Colby's home, a group of Wesleyans from Cincinnati served free meals to anyone who walked up. We availed ourselves of a few hamburgers and hot dogs:
Father Chris's home is marked by this sign:
We decided we love what the Colbys are doing with their roof:
This is the Colbys' back yard. If you look at the bottom of the photo, you can see that the felled tree serves as one end of a clothesline (all the appliances on the ground floor of the home were ruined by water). If you look to the left, in the distance on the far side of the railroad tracks, you can see a line of coiled razor wire arranged two deep, to keep people from entering the neighborhood through the woods behind the tracks.
Amazing scenes of destruction are plentiful. So many, in fact, that the brain quickly begins to filter out all but the most severe. Acre after acre of demolished trees, mile after mile of bulldozed debris...
...is all so commonplace that it takes something like this to grab your attention:
We unloaded most of the equipment and supplies, and a case of Bibles, for Father Chris's new home office where he'll conduct the business of the church. We took a truckload full of baby formula and food, hand sanitizing solution, diapers, toys, t-shirts and undergarments, and toiletries to Coast Episcopal School. Then the three of us set off down Second Street, headed for Trinity Church. This is a view down Second Street:
These are just a few of the homes along Second Street. Of the approximately 8,000 homes in Pass Christian, only about 500 are habitable:
The white house in the background once sat on the concrete blocks in the foreground:
Moving west down Second Street, the destruction leaves the realm of the amazing and enters the bizarre:
This restaurateur seemed to be making a statement of defiance:
The first glimpse of Trinity takes your breath away:
The majestic mangled light fixtures swayed in the soft breeze coming in off the Gulf:
Trinity's floor, which was graced with a rich red carpet (Father Chris hated it, I loved it), is now stripped clean, with exposed joists all over:
Only shreds of the carpet remain here and there:
Father Chris has created a humble yet powerfully stoic pulpit from the ruins of his church:
Plenty of live oaks survived the storm, but plenty perished. This one...
... left a pit into which all sorts of debris was deposited:
Everywhere you turn, there is something that shouldn't be where it is:
In the parking lot I found a street sign from Boisdore Ave., ripped from the pole where it stood - thirteen blocks away.
To the west of the nave, some of Trinity's stained glass can be found:
Trinity's church bells have a piece of a sailboat hull lodged in them. The boat's mast, boom and sails lie on the concrete in the background:
Part of the starboard deck and cockpit of the boat lie behind the parish hall:
The church's once-grand live oak grove leading to the sea is now in ruins:
Behind Trinity lies the Live Oak Cemetery, a place so beautiful and serene it made Savannah jealous. The destruction to Live Oaks left me speechless; it resembles a particularly disturbed Dali painting. Soon I found myself on the verge of tears, and had to sit down.
Some of Trinity's stained glass and red carpet made its way into the cemetery:
Note the carpet in the limb in the upper right:
Over in Gulfport, things are looking much better. Streets that two weeks ago were impassable are being cleared. Large pieces of tree trunks remain, but they are cut into lengths that are manageable for big machinery, and piled away from people's driveways.
A group of Texans has set up a chuck wagon, and makes coffee and cooks stews using cast-iron gear over charcoal fires:
"Booger" the three-legged dog keeps everyone company:
...and the military keeps them supplied with water:
There is nothing left of the Pass Christian Yacht Club:
Exposed tree roots on Highway 90:
The adjacent lane on a section of Highway 90 we travelled:
The Gulf of Mexico, from which this horror came.
If you'd like to make a secure, tax-deductible donation to the American Anglican Council's Hurricane Relief Fund, please click here.This is almost certain to spark spirited debate over the question of whether homosexuals should be priests at all, but I suggest that the real story is something else: The inconceivability of this ever happening in the Anglican Communion reveals what will ultimately be pointed to as the weakness that led to its disintegration.
UPDATE: Vatican Removes 11 Chicago Priests
A red-beans-and-rice dinner was served to 150 evacuees at the River of Life Assembly of God Church in Brandon, Mississippi on Friday, September 9th.
Dinner also included green beans, rolls, iced tea and brownies:
After we prepared the food, a team of servers descended on the kitchen to take over serving duties. Ladies representing First Presbyterian, Lakeside Presbyterian, Christ United Methodist, and River of Life were present:
The crowd from New Orleans and the coast had had little of their "indigenous" food since evacuating. Their standards - and expectations - for red beans and rice were high:
This little guy couldn't wait:
This little girl looked ready to dive in:
And these two seemed very happy to have a taste of home!
There were lots of full mouths and thumbs-ups as we left River of Life...
Stand Firm and the American Anglican Council have begun relief efforts for the victims of Hurricane Katrina now taking shelter in Jackson, Mississippi. Relief funds collected by the AAC on their web site are being distributed to the Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana Stand Firm chapters.
Nothing - not even the photos from flood-ravaged New Orleans - can compare to the images of destruction from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but before showing you photos from our early relief efforts, I wanted to try, if possible, to put in perspective the destructive force of this storm by showing you a few photographs from my neighborhood near downtown Jackson. Remember that this is 200 miles inland.
Here is what my street looked like the morning after the storm:
This is a large pine tree in a neighbor's yard. It missed his house by mere feet:
This is an even larger tree from the same yard:
...and this is what it was ripped from:
It fell onto the street and blocked it for a couple of days. This was fairly typical of every second or third block in the neighborhood:
Just four blocks over, an elderly woman was killed - and her daughter narrowly escaped death herself - when a tree fell through her roof. When Katrina hit Jackson, it was still a category 1 hurricane.
Here's Tommy Smith of Buffalo Peak Outfitters in Jackson. Tommy has stayed on the phone for days, negotiating deep discounts with suppliers, and matching people who need things with people who can provide things.
This is David Adams, who is transporting tents, first aid kits, and many other kinds of gear and supplies to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. David is working mainly from the giant distribution center set up at Christ United Methodist Church:
David and a volunteer load the truck for another trip to the coast:
Stand Firm and the AAC have purchased two Kelty "Mantra" 3-man tents:
... and three Sierra Designs "Bedouin" 4-man tents:
...for a total sleeping space of 18 people, plus insect repellant for all of them. The tents will be given to residents of the coast whose homes have been destroyed.
Another area Stand Firm and AAC are focusing their efforts is disabled children who have been displaced by the storm, and will be enrolling in Jackson Public Schools for the coming school year.
First Baptist Church in downtown Jackson has been designated the medical "special needs" center, and currently houses a large number of disabled people. Tuesday we provided 150 red beans and rice meals to the evacuees staying there.
First Baptist has done a very impressive job of housing their evacuees. Cots and air mattresses have been set up in the gymnasium. Evacuees have specialized medical equipment - oxygen tanks, nebulizers, etc. - located directly next to their beds. Electrical outlets are neatly run to each person's spot (note the black line running along the foot of the cot in the foreground). A volunteer stands guard at the entrance of the gym to ensure that only evacuees and authorized volunteers are allowed in, ensuring a quiet and orderly sleeping area:
Just outside the gymnasium is a desk that is now almost indistinguishable from a nurse's station at a major hospital:
Most evacuees are adults with special medical needs, but there are a few children at the church. They have the run of the game room:
Tomorrow we're helping move in the first family whose child we'll be assisting. The child has cerebral palsy and severe asthma. The family had reached the end of the line at the local hotel where they were staying, and they are thrilled to be moving to First Baptist I ate dinner Tuesday night with a family whose mother was in a wheelchair and whose father needed dialysis; they described the church's accommodations - the fourth center they've been to since the storm - as "wonderful"). We'll get them settled in some time in the morning, then in the afternoon we're cooking for 150 evacuees and volunteers at another church in Brandon (just east of Jackson). Over the weekend we'll return to First Baptist, spend more time with our disabled child, and help him get enrolled in school.
There are approximately 25,000 evacuees in Jackson.
If you'd like to contribute to relief efforts through the American Anglican Council, please visit their web site here.
If you'd like to donate directly to Stand Firm, please send your tax-deductible donation to:
Stand Firm
Attn: Hurricane Relief
PO Box 13451
Jackson, MS 39236
Stand Firm is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated in the State of Mississippi. Your contributiuons are tax-deductible.
The Rev. Susan Russell, president of Integrity, is at it again. She's trying to gin up support for a rally on the California state capitol tonight to protest Gov. Schwarzenegger's threatened veto of that state's same-sex marriage bill:
IT IS NOT TOO LATE - We must move quickly and with one voice tonight to ask Governor Schwarzenegger to re-think his position. He has not actually vetoed the bill yet because the bill hasn't even reached his desk. Our lives hang in the balance. Governor Schwarzenegger has the power to make history and secure protections for our families - are you willing to help us TONIGHT?
Join Equality California at the State Capitol TONIGHT for a vigil and rally asking the Governor not to shut the door on civil rights and protections for tens of thousands of same-sex couples and their children.
UPDATE: Russell's pretzel logic gets even more twisted...
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,
I read with dismay your announced intention to veto the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act passed by the California State Senate and Assembly. I write add to my voice to those urging you to reconsider.
I write as a priest and pastor asking you to reject the rabid rhetoric of those on the Religious Right who represent themselves as having sole possession of "Christian Values" on the issue of marriage equality. They do not speak for me or for my parish or for the countless other faithful Christians who understand God's inclusive love as available to all: rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight. Furthermore, in a nation where separation of church and state is an essential aspect of our very identity as Americans it is unconscionable that any faith-based perspective should be allowed derail our democracy with their theology. Please be the governor who takes a stand to keep church and state separate and ensure both our religious freedom and our civil liberties.
I write as a lesbian in a partnered relationship asking you to use the power of your office to bring us a step closer to realizing the American dream of a nation where "liberty and justice for all" truly means all. Gay and lesbian families are currently without the equal protection of over one thousand legal rights, benefits and responsibilities automatically granted to married couples. As we watch with horror the unfolding tragedy in the Gulf Coast we recognize that natural disasters do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation but relief resources do: gay and lesbian families will fail to qualify for much of the aid and assistance their straight neighbors will receive. Please be the governor we remember as ensuring that this will not be the fate our families face in California when the inevitable earthquake we call "The Big One" hits.
I write as American citizen and California native asking you to stand on the side of justice on this important issue. The elected representatives of the California electorate have passed this piece of legislation and if our voice as an electorate counts for anything then AB849 deserves your signature. This bill is not in conflict with Proposition 22 - an initiative written to "close a loophole" between California's marriage law and the law of other jurisdictions. Rather, this legislation changes that law to give the equal protection guaranteed in the Constitution to gay and lesbian couples - citizens who seek only the same rights, privileges and responsibilities as their fellow straight Californians. Had voters in the 1960's been able to challenge the end of segregation through the initiative process is there any doubt that those in power would have voted to keep the status quo? Please be the governor who history remembers not as standing with Lester Maddox blocking the door to equal rights but with those throughout the proud history of this great country who risked much to open the door to all Americans.
Faithfully,
The Reverend Susan Russell
All Saints Episcopal Church, Pasadena CA
In Jerusalem's time of crisis, Paul called upon the Church to take up an offering for the Brothers and Sisters in Jerusalem. The Stand Firm Board has been prayerfully led to offer its website connection with the Anglican Community to be an additional means of funneling assistance to Hurricane Katrina victims. Stand Firm is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, and contributions can be made directly by mail or through its Pay-Pal Account (designating your gift as "Hurricane Relief"). Several Stand Firm Board Members are directly involved in the relief effort, and two are believed to have lost their Churches and homes. AAC Member Church, Trinity, Pass Christian, served by the Rev. Chris Colby is among the churches destroyed.
You may also make contributions online through the American Anglican Council web site by clicking here.
Stand Firm Board Member, The Rev. Susan Bear, at the Church of the Ascension in Hattiesburg, Mississippi is coordinating Relief Efforts on behalf of the Diocese of Mississippi from her location in Hattiesburg, which, going South, is about where communication stops.
Churches lost along the Coast include Trinity, Pass Christian; St. Peter's By-The-Sea, Gulfport; Church of the Redeemer, Biloxi; St. Mark's, Gulfport; Christ Church, Bay St. Louis and St. Patrick's, Long Beach. At this time we have received no word on the extent of the damage at St. John's, Pascagoula, St. Paul's, Picayune and St. John's, Ocean Springs.
Additionally, Stand Firm has set up this special web site to serve as a message board for members of each of the damaged parishes and missions to contact their clergy and one another. Each congregation name is posted, and by clicking on the name of the Church, clergy and members or persons needing to contact members and clergy can do so through the website.
As the Board of Stand Firm, we want to encourage prayer, personal contact and communication as much as possible. As helpful as technology can be when there IS electrical power and transmission capability, when there is no power, it has its limitations. This is a time when the Church can reach out and pray for one another, and touch one another, in intentional acts of kindness, in ways that the internet and telecommunications cannot. When we cannot communicate directly with one another, we can touch one another through our prayers to a living Lord, who is present with us and connects us as His Body. We invite prayers and fasting for the victims and survivors of this terrible storm and pray that the Lord will even use this Hurricane to draw us closer to Him, and to one another.
It is not the intention of Stand Firm to circumvent other relief channels, but simply to offer another means of directing funds. Please see the box at the upper right of this page for the Stand Firm P.O. Box.
- The Board of Stand Firm Mississippi
Take in this image, then zoom in and start moving around. Take note of the way interstate ramps disappear into blackness - that blackness is water.
Father Michael Osborne has been shot and killed while on a trip to a hardware store in Hattiesburg, Mississippi:
What happened next has left the Hattiesburg Police Department with a murder investigation and his family and friends with a lot of unanswered questions.
Paramedics found Osborne dead of a gunshot wound to his shoulder around 8:30 p.m. Thursday. Police say shortly after being shot in the 1200 block of Coit Street, he crashed his red Chevrolet Suburban into a telephone pole on the corner of Dewey and Loula streets. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
We have set up a message center for the use of parishioners in the six coastal parishes that have been destroyed. Please distribute this address to everyone you can:
www.relief.standfirminfaith.com
We will be adding more parishes in need of help as we learn of them, plus links to relief agencies and other helpful sites and organizations. Please visit the new site immediately and give us all the information you can on each parish.
Thank God! Charles Leggett, Stand Firm Mississippi's treasurer and a damn good man, is safe. I just received this email from him:
We have escaped the Gulf Coast and are now in a small vacation home at Henderson LA. I did save my computer and have set up an AOL account.
Ann, her mother, Maudrine, and my daughter, Demi, and myself arrived here last night. We now have water, air conditioning and a place to rest, Thank God for friends with extra homes, and this gift.
Ann, Maudrine, and I rode out the storm in a condo at Diamondhead where we escaped the high water and were somewhat safe. Demi waited too long to leave her apartment and couldn't get out. She was in one of the apartment houses on the beach. She escaped with her life and her poodle dog. When her building started coming a part, somehow she managed to grab her dog and get to another building, where she was rescued and taken to a shelter. After a three day search we finally found her at one of her friend's home close to the shelter.
Our homes and contents are totally destroyed. We only have overnight clothing, but we are blessed, because we can buy more clothes and other things. There are many on the coast who have nothing except the aid that had arrived. Please help them if you can. We thank God for our lives and for our daughter and for bringing us safely to Henderson, La.
God bless you all.
Charlie