Aiya Iluvatar

Bring Out Your Dead!!!

Looks like I got out of World of Warcraft just in time - a plague that accidentally spread and killed pre-50th-level characters?  Very interesting....

Warcraft Plague Runs Amok

A Sermon Not Preached

This is the sermon I didn't preach on Sunday, September 11th.  After working it through with Micky (my wife) we both felt it had too much anger and was not appropriate to be preached from the pulpit.  We both felt it had a lot of merit, but I need more distance from the events before preaching on it.  It's too personal right now. 

BTW, I am aware of the dichotomy of preaching about Anger and wrath in what can be considered an angry way.  I will be working on my own anger about this situation - the sermon is part of that process.

Sermon for Proper 19, A 09/11/05

• Anger and wrath, these are abominations,
•     yet a sinner holds on to them.
• The vengeful will face the Lord's vengeance,
•     for he keeps a strict account of their sins.
• The reading from Ecclesiasticus seems a very appropriate one for today, the 4th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America.
• I have preached several times since then on what I perceive to be the dangerous amount of fear and anger that we have allowed our society to manifest since those events.
• Anger and fear are the greatest foes of democracy and Christianity.
• We have used our fears to justify demonizing the other, to mark ourselves as the righteous, to ignore the plight of the poor and the stranger among us.
• We became so jaded that even the well-researched reports that civilian casualties in Iraq had exceeded 100,000 people barely made the news, and my insistence from the pulpit that this should at least make us take pause drew some heated responses.
• For four years, we have stewed in the juice of our own fear, we have neglected the council of other nations, and we have focused on protecting ourselves from the enemy outside.
• While we fretted and spent billions trying to protect ourselves from the scattered remnants of Al Quada and trying to rebuild a democratic, united Iraq that it seems many Iraqis are not really interested in, it would appear we neglected other things.
• This time, we are faced with a challenge that makes September 11, 2001 pale in comparison.
• Thousands of people dead, untold billions of dollars of property damage, a displacement of population on a scale that has not been seen in America since the dust bowl of the 1930s – and all without an outside enemy to blame.
• We could blame God, but then again, people have known this could happen for decades, and we had ample warning about the approach and severity of the storm.
• No, God is not to blame, unless you get into the general question of why suffering occurs at all.
• In fact, evacuation was ordered, and those who had the means to do so got out.
• The problem was, those who did not have the means did not.
• Whether you blame it on race or class discrimination or on gross negligence on the part of government, there was no provision for transportation of those who did not have the means to get themselves out.
• And after the storm, the speed of relief was unacceptably slow.
• My brother in law who was in a transportation battalion of the KY National Guard, held back from Iraq on disaster duty, whose unit was designated to be on hurricane relief a week before the storm hit, did not receive his orders until five days afterwards.
• We as a nation are being judged, and found wanting.
• After the shock of September 11th, we had two paths to choose from.
• The path we chose was one that emphasized fear and force.
• It emphasized our goodness and others’ badness.
• We turned away from another path.
• A path where we could have emphasized that there are root causes of hate and fear, and they are more likely to come from severe impoverishment than ideological difference.
• We chose to hang on to anger and wrath and nurture it.
• We withdrew from treaties we had made, from promises we had given on development goals and AIDS relief.
• We were so narrow that we could not see the coming threat, because it was not from the direction we chose to expect it from.
• Now we are faced with the question that should be gnawing at the soul of every American right now, “Why did the poor die and the rich survive?”
• It is a question that should be especially poignant for those of us who follow Jesus, since he has a particular preference for the poor.
• We have managed to prevent women from brining emery boards and breast milk on airplanes, we can land an airborne rapid reaction force anywhere on the globe in 24 hours, but we can’t get food to storm victims inside the United States in less than a week.
• Anyone who has made a cursory reading of the Gospels should be able to see that there is a real, Christian issue here.
• The priorities should be troubling to anyone with a Christian conscience.
• The outpouring of compassion we have seen is truly moving.
• Certainly in the case of Murray, the compassion has been amazing; with our local people going down to pick up refugees rather than simply wait for them.
• As a person who has been working at our shelter continuously for the last week, I can tell you that the evacuees really appreciate it.
• They are wonderful people, with pride and dignity that want a better life for their children, are not looking for handouts, and want to be productive members of society.
• America is to be commended for her generosity to her sons and daughters in this crisis.
• But it is all for naught if we don’t learn a lesson and change the way we think.
• As we heard from Paul today, each of us is accountable to God.
• Each one of us, as a taxpaying, voting citizen, bears some blame for the response of our government.
• Some say we should not play the “Blame Game.”
• But, as John Stewart commented the other night, “Those who don’t want to play the blame game are usually the ones to blame.”
• If we continue to live in the fear of September 11, 2001.
• If we continue to hang on to anger and wrath,
• If we continue to overlook the needs of real people at home and abroad so that we can indulge our paranoia about our enemies,
• Then this will happen again.
• We hear in ecclesiasticus, “
• Does anyone harbor anger against another,
•     and expect healing from the Lord?
• If one has no mercy toward another like himself,
•     can he then seek pardon for his own sins?”
• For us to be a truly God-fearing nation, we must ascribe anger and wrath to God, and concentrate on the challenges that Jesus has told us we are to address – the needs of our neighbor, whether home or abroad.
• Amen.

David+

FEMA Redux

These days FEMA's website is so overloaded, we can't even get our people registered.  When you do get that far, their server often buckles under the load halfway through a 25 minute registration and you have to start over again.  Very frustrating.

David+

Federal Emergency Mystification Agency

I'm not sure what my favorite Federal agency is, but FEMA isn't it.  We had been expecting someone for days to show up to help us figure out how to get people enrolled for disaster benefits.  We got a call today -  no one is coming.  They provided us with an 800 number that all our people are expected to call on our one phone line.  Upon calling that number, they get a message that states that there are too many people calling and that they need to call back at another time.

We figured out that you could also do the forms online, although it uses a proprietary Microsoft system that requires Internet Explorer on a Windows machine.  It takes about 25 minutes to enroll someone, which means, hmm, we will spend about 60 man-hours doing FEMA's job for them.

Since we did the Red Cross's job locating relatives and FEMA's job getting people enrolled in benefits, I'm wondering what those two organizations are doing?  Certainly not much here, although the Red Cross has had a volunteer at the shelter all day today.

David+

Wiring the Kingdom

So here's the scoop.  We received 119 refugees on Saturday night and another 20 or so last night.  On Sunday, a couple of of church members and I began to set up a computer network to allow the refugees to try to track relatives and be found on the Red Cross web site.  It was challenging, because we had to bridge about 50 feet through several walls to get to the DSL line, but we set up a wireless bridge and it's working very well.  We have four computers on the Wi-Fi G network.  We've had a LOT of refugees make connections through the web site.  A few have left, and others are making arrangements.  Some are considering relocating here.  We still have not seen a FEMA representative.

We seem to be WAY ahead of the curve.  There are several centers that are not answering their phones or refusing to take messages because of their lack of infrastructure and number of refugees.  Luckily, many of the refugees have cell phones and many have web-based e-mail accounts.

My major frustration has been how this has played out on the web.  There are two separate databases at the red cross and at MSNBC.  Both are voluntary, that is, they have to sit down at the computer and enter themselves to be found.  Wouldn't a comprehensive database compiled by the Red Cross or FEMA containing all registered refugees and made available to all authorized shelters be an intelligent thing?  Wouldn't it be an easy no-brainer?  The local Red Cross people promised us copies of the reg forms they took at the shelters, then called back two days later to say HIPA made that impossible, even to put on a Red Cross web site! And the Red Cross website as it exists is frustrating because it contains only one name field and names are not being entered in a consistent manner nationwide.

God help us if we were hit with a disaster that we didn't have warning about - hard to believe we didn't even have a rudimentary IT architecture to deal with this.

David+

Photo

From the Courier Journal Article yesterday....

Clifford Jones, 8, got a hand from the Rev. David Simmons yesterday morning as he got off one of the buses that delivered hurricane evacuees to the camp. They are expected to stay up to four weeks while local housing is found.

Sooo Tired....

Murray has received 119 Refugees from Katrina housed in the Woodmen of the World camp.  They arrived at 4 AM this morning, and I haven't slept since Friday night.  Of course, many of these people haven't been sleeping for a week.  The stories are truly terrible  - WORSE that what you hear on television.  We had one mother who was put onto a separate bus from her children, only to have their bus diverted somewhere else - we have no idea where.  Today myself and a couple of members of my congregation set up a Wi-Fi network and three computers so that the refugees can check the Red Cross family registry to find relatives.  We solved a need no one else had seen yet.  Hopefully, we will be able to key the refugees we have into the system tomorrow.

Sleeping soon....

David+